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Bruce McKinney believes information is power, especially for collectors. And so he developed Americanaexchange.com, an online database of auction catalogs for books, maps, and ephemera pertaining to the "Americas." This database currently hosts 571,485 records from over 70 auction houses. 450,000 are currently in processing and McKinney's broader goal is to reach a million. AE offers subscribers the opportunity to search auction catalog descriptions for particular items with the ability to allow a collector a larger perspective about an item.
McKinney describes it this way. "Our feeling is that auction records contain a certain amount of information that's incremental, building a record about a book." Like pointillism in painting, "if every bit of information is equal to a dot of color, a picture emerges as more and more dots are added to the canvas. Depending on how acute an observer one is, relationships and patterns will emerge."
The project began three years ago when McKinney, himself an avid collector of new world items within the years 1493 - 1625, in order to provide information that's important to sellers and buyers alike. For the past 16 months AE has been available to subscribers.
"Initially the response was relatively tough," McKinney admits but blames the lukewarm response to the audience he solicited. Booksellers affiliated with associations weren't the most fruitful road to take; his more than one thousand current subscribers were obtained from a non-traditional book world.
This encourages McKinney. "The book business is a highly exclusionary process. Organizations like the ABAA make it difficult for non-traditional booksellers to attain membership." At present, a bookseller working from home has to be a full-time seller for a number of years, develop professional contacts within the ABAA and apply for membership. It's easier to just start selling books on the various selling sites like eBay and Abe.
eBay, McKinney believes, has leveled the bookselling playing field and opened the profession up to almost everybody. His own experience as a collector includes searching eBay daily with keywords to match his interests. Every 2 or 3 days he finds items of real value selling for low prices. As a buyer, he doesn't worry about where the items are coming from, as long as they are as described and arrive quickly.
Another aspect of AE is the ability for collectors to look ahead. "Most collectors," he said, "die with their books on the shelves. This leaves the family with a formidable task." This is an aspect that's deeply personal for McKinney. "I needed an orderly market for books that are gathered." If his family wants to sell his books after he's gone, they will have the tools to know each book's value.
The Internet offers this service to everyone, he said. Another colorful example he offers to explain the value of his company is likening it to Coca Cola. Without a worldwide market, Coca Cola is an Atlanta product. Who in St. Louis would buy stock in a company that they know nothing about? Today information is available to the national market and Coca Cola's stock is a staple for many investors.
The world of books is not like Coca Cola at all, McKinney says. It's more obscure and he believes that is deliberately so and this puts collectors at a disadvantage. With booksellers now using the Internet to sell, the word rare for a book isn't the same as it once was. Just because a seller doesn't come across the book very often doesn't mean it isn't more common elsewhere. AE allows both sellers and collectors to have a better working knowledge about individual books.
AE is a company of 7 employees located in San Francisco, CA and has a multi-tiered subscription offering. There is a free portion that includes a newsletter that's well written. Visitors can sign up for a week for $7.95. The most basic membership and the most popular is the Research level for $10 a month and allows for 24/7 365 access to the database. A more advanced membership is Octavo for $17.50 a month and this allows access to AE's matchmaking service. Members at this level can plug in 35 keywords and 500 titles. Two more levels are above this, Quarto and Folio and these "are just more horsepower to the engine," McKinney explains. Quarto subscribers can list 100 keywords and 1000 titles; Folio members get 200 keywords and 2000 titles. "But you'll need an assistant for that," he quipped.
For more information, visit their Web site at http://www.americanaexchange.com.
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