ABE Books Doesn’t Know Dick

I stopped dealing books on ABE Books eight years ago because it was obvious they wanted to nickle-and-dime dealers to death, as well as force us to sign up for third party re-sale programs that were previously voluntary. Plus the people in charge didn’t strike me as the smartest knives in the toolbox.

Speaking of ABE stupidity, over at SF Signal I noticed this link to an ABE article on the most valuable first editions of Philip K. Dick. Below some boilerplate on Philip K. Dick’s life (generally accurate, but nothing anyone couldn’t have written by skimming Wikipedia or Clute & Nichols) there’s a list of “Top 15 Most Collectible Philip K. Dick titles sold on AbeBooks”. The problem is, anyone with a knowledge of Philip K. Dick first editions who looks at the pictures accompanying those fifteen titles can tell the people who put them up didn’t have a freaking clue, as many don’t match the edition they’re illustrating:

  1. The picture accompanying Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is not the Doubleday first edition of 1968 described, but a later UK edition. An example of the real dust jacket for the first edition (albeit an Ex-Library copy) from my own collection is shown below.

  2. The picture accompanying the listing for a UK Gollancz edition signed by Dick could not have been the edition Dick signed, since it is part of the Gollancz Masterworks editions published about two decades after Dick’s death. FWIW, my copy of the true Putnum first edition is shown below.

  3. The edition of Valis shown in the image is not that of the Kerosina Press lettered hardback edition, but the more recent trade paperback reprint. (I have a copy of the slipcased numbered edition signed by Kim Stanley Robinson, but not one of the lettered copies with the Dick signature tipped in.) A scan of the cover of the Kerosina edition is shown below.

  4. The copy of Dr. Bloodmoney shown is not the Gregg Press hardback described, but the true paperback original (PBO) edition mentioned in passing. (All a scan would show is the usual Gregg Press plain green cloth.)
  5. The copy of The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick shown is not one of the 1/100 deluxe editions with Dick’s signature tipped in, but rather the regular unsigned edition (which is also the edition I have).
  6. The picture of Solar Lottery shown is not the Gregg Press (first US hardback) edition described, but the PBO. (Again, all a scan would show is the usual Gregg Press plain green cloth.)
  7. The copy of Confessions of a Crap Artist shown is not the Entwhistle hardback described, but one of the trade paperback editions (I own the hardback first, a scan of which is shown below, but I don’t own the paperback, so I can’t tell from sight whether this is one of the essentially simultaneous first edition in wrappers, or the second printing.)

So, out of fifteen books, seven have the wrong picture. That’s pretty piss-poor for an article on collectible books. Then again, ABE frequently does things in a piss-poor manner. Anyone with any familiarity with Dick first editions would have spotted the discrepancies between the text and pictures right away.

And when I said “generally accurate,” there is a significant error in describing why Dick’s works are so valuable:

Because of his relative obscurity throughout much of his life, most of Dick’s works received modest initial print runs. As a result, signed copies of those titles remain very scarce, making Dick one of the most collectible names in modern science fiction.

No, Dick’s early PBOs had runs in the hundreds of thousands (as did most SF paperbacks of that era), and the print run for Dick’s hardback books from mainstream SF publishers, while modest by the standards of bestsellers, were not any smaller than the runs companies like Doubleday did for their other SF writers. Signed Dick books are particularly valuable because he didn’t go to a lot of conventions or do terribly many signings. Also, many of his works published as paperback originals had later small hardback print runs from either small press or UK publishing houses, but they were not initial print runs, they were later editions for the collector or library markets, and they were done not because Dick was obscure, but because he was quite popular among SF readers.

For more reliable information of Dick first editions, I would direct you to L.W. Currey’s Science Fiction and Fantasy Authors: A Bibliography of First Printings of Their Fiction and Daniel J. Levack’s PKD: A Philip K. Dick Bibliography.

For the record, of the 15 Dick titles they list, I have the first hardback editions of 12 of them (though not in the signed states that made many of the copies listed in the ABE piece so pricey); I lack Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, the Gregg Press Dr. Bloodmoney and the Rich & Cowen World of Chance, which was the first hardback edition of Solar Lottery. I do, however, have a copy of the Cape first hardback edition of The Penultimate Truth, which is rarer than about half the books on their list…

Updated 3/17/10: At least someone at ABE seems to have been paying attention, as many of the wrong images have now been replaced, and the text I singled out as erroneous has been rewritten.

Tags: , , ,

6 Responses to “ABE Books Doesn’t Know Dick”

  1. Dwight Brown says:

    “6. Valis
    Sold for: $1,326

    Limited edition letter copy, this being “T”, with an afterword by Kim Stanley Robinson, signed by her with a Philip K. Dick signed check stubb tipped-in. ”

    Signed by HER? Her who? Either there’s something missing there, or the person who wrote that thinks Kim Stanley Robinson is female.

  2. jasmine says:

    hey evory body i like that person dick

  3. […] One of the things the WordPress stats package shows you is which Google search terms people use to reach your site. It is my suspicion that whoever was searching for “pictures of a person’s dick” was most likely bitterly disappointed at these scans of my Philip K. Dick first editions… […]

  4. Robert Cook says:

    Mr. Person,
    As you have a copy of the original hardback of DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP, I wonder–if you are still checking responses here–if you would be willing to do me a favor. I understand if you prefer not to.

    I have a copy of the original Doubleday ANDROIDS, not in fine or new condition, but in good condition, I would say. (I don’t know how the bibliophile market’s standards would grade it.) I purchased it from an online dealer and got it for the bargain price of $100.00 as it does not include the dust jacket. I have made and printed my own dust jacket using an image of my own devising. However, I have always considered that original dust jacket not only the finest cover design for ANY edition of ANDROIDS, but one of the very finest for any of Dick’s books.

    Would you be willing or able to provide a large, high-quality scan of your copy of the dust jacket? I would–after cleaning it up in Photoshop–very much like to print it and use it as a facsimile of the original jacket on my own copy of the book. (I assure you I have no intention of trying to sell the book and palm it off as having the original jacket. This is strictly for my own pleasure as a fan of PKD and of good graphic design.)

    I know this is an unusual request and I will not grumble (or persist) if you demur.

    Thank you and best regards, Robert Cook

  5. Lawrence Person says:

    Because my copy has tape ghosts, it’s probably not what you want, even if I had a scanner big enough (mine is a little too short). However, these people should be able to help you out.

  6. Robert Cook says:

    I thank you for your response and for the link you have provided. Best,
    Robert

Leave a Reply