Is Anyone Under 40 Collecting Books?

That's the question Fine Books Magazine recently asked. The simple answer is there are.

From the piece...

Fowler explained that although a lot of his young customers are very smart and cultured people, they are simply not aware that there is a history of book collecting. To them, you buy a book, and maybe another, but there is no coherence, or growth, to the activity.

But how could they know this, asked Fowler, when most became readers in an age when serious bookstores were closing?

“All of a sudden bookstores became a complete anachronism,” he said. “So I play that up. One thing that books have over electronics is their anachronism.”

According to Fowler, books to a younger collector have a very different meaning than they do to a collector from the pre-Internet days. In the past people bought books mostly to read them. It was a practical thing. The distance required to view them as artifacts did not exist.

To a young collector, however, who does not see a book as the primary source of culture, it is essentially an artifact. So a bookseller working today must know this and embrace it, instead of resisting it, as many do.

“To them it all seems incredibly antique,” he said. “They all think it’s a cool object. But they have no idea why it’s worth $50.”