I have a large pile of dust jackets and marketing slips that's growing. Sometimes I put them on, but not when I'm still reading the book. Also, I'm not sure what the proper term for "marketing slip" but it is the thin paper that goes outside of the dust jacket which has the sales advertisement/description of the book and the price ("learn these 20 joseki and you'll get 10 stones stronger!"). In the past I would just toss these things because I find it difficult to read while they are on the book. But I know there are people that like to keep the jackets. Maybe for display or collectability. I am wondering about this now because I have noticed that almost all used books that I've purchased online lately have come with not only the dust jacket, but the marketing slips as well. It's amazing to me that people would keep that. The marketing slips and their safe keeping might just be a Japanese book thing. But some book fans (Tolkien fans especially) despise those that throw these types of thing out. Car enthusiasts when a classic has the original owners manual.

Do any of you keep dust jackets? Or just toss them? Do they matter for resale value? Does this matter for Go books at all? Are Go books even "collectible"?

Maybe a topic for another day or post, but it seems like English Go books just get discontinued and then they vanish, without any secondary market for them. Or, if they are sold, it is some huge "estate lot." And it seems like there is less of a market for foreign language books. So if the main reason for keeping the dust jacket is resale value, then does that even matter for Go books?

For disclosure, I'm not looking to sell anything. Just wondering.

I don't keep dust-jackets, which are however useful if you want to stop sunlight foxing your covers. Ishi Press books are notorious for cover colours fading quickly, but it happens to most books.

What you call marketing slips I treat as bookmarks and keep them - but not necessarily with the books they came with. If they get lost I don't fret.

The little wrap-around slips that come on Japanese books irritate me intensely and I throw them away at once.

What I do keep, however, are the boxes that come with larger and more expensive Japanese books.

All that behaviour matches what I see on offer in Japanese second-hand bookshops. Some shopkeepers, however, will put a dust-jacket on when you buy the book - it's seen as "service".

One behaviour you don't mention is writing in books. For reasons I can't explain I am always very reluctant to do this, though when I buy a second-hand book I am not put off if it's written in (with the exception perhaps of books that contain the owner's name - I find that really naff). I used to be especially shy of writing in dictionaries (they were so damn expensive! - and traditional dictionary paper is thin) but when I started work as a translator there was a trade magazine that had a column in it called "From my margins" and it was a collection of words that the author had written into the margins of his dictionaries and wanted to share with others (this was all before the internet was even a gleam in the eye). Under gentle pressure from my boss I slowly began to follow that practice, although always using a faint pencil and never a pen, and I have to admit it has come up trumps several times over the years.

I don't see myself as a collector (or a seller) so my behaviour is not influenced in that respect, but I gather from people that buy and sell that dust-jackets (in the sense of original covers, of course) can boost the value of a first edition astronomically.

I don't normally buy English go books myself, but I do get plaintive requests fairly often from people looking for copies of, say, Kamakura. I have thought of creating print on-demand versions, but it's just too much work for the tiny number of sales you can expect. Even with brand-new books the most you can hope for is a succès d'estime. If you are VERY lucky, you may just get the money you spent on printer cartridges back.

Dust jackets only matter on first editions from famous authors. People who keep them on common books may be a bit OCD or have already decided they are going to resell the volumes. Personally, I keep dust jackets for my hardcovers in a drawer until I'm finished with the book. I put the jacket back on and place the book on a shelf, donate it to the library (where it will likely be sold) or give it to my son.

Book collecting and reselling valuable books for profit are different topics from passing on specialized or esoteric printed matter within a community. Buy cool books, read them, and enjoy their company. When you no longer want them, sell them cheaply or give them away to another member of your community.

I have resold dozens of highly esoteric books but I've always given away my go books. I usually ask the recipient to promise to pass the books along to another go enthusiast when they are done with them.

High value books, rare books, collectors items, and the like are a different matter. If you have go books that you know are particularly valuable, you might wish to care for them but, seriously, what do you expect to do with them? Librareis do not want them unless they already have a go collection or the collection you are offering is complete and you wish to make a concurrent cash contribution. Collectors probably already have them. Go schools and institutes have their own collections and their own storage problems.

Seems to me the market for used go books is much smaller than the market for new go books and both are being replaced by electronic go books.

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David Bogie, Boise ID
I play go, I ride a recumbent, of course I use Macintosh.

I suppose dust jackets can increase the value of second hand books because they protect the book and they can be interesting. Not sure if that was meant because the replies so far have been about the value of the dust jacket per se. Personally, I have bought used books because of the cover. There is some value in it in the right setting.

Personally I know lot of people who keep the dust jackets on forever. There are also people who keep protective plastic covers on mobile phone and TV screens, and I have seen people walking around for months with plastic sticker covers on their glasses. Keeping the dust jackets on books is not so silly in perspective.

About used Go books. I haven´t tried buying or selling used Go books, but I imagine that the market is small. For one thing it is often the case that one can more easily buy new copies even if the translation was first published 20+ years ago. When people ask about books to become stronger the usual answers are some not so new titles like "The Direction of Play" or "Lessons in the Fundamentals of Go" which you can apparently buy new. I think these books were published in English in the the 1990's. It seems a bit different than with books on many other topics.

Not quite the same thing, but this reminds me of baseball caps. There was a time when Mark Hall and I were making good progress in visiting every MLB ball park, and of course we collected caps for every team.

This made us aware of other people in Britain wearing MLB caps, and we would often strike up conversations in the street. One even was with a relative of the owner of Kansas City Royals (Mrs Kaufmann?) and got us an invitation - which was never taken up because Mark disappeared up the yellow brick road before it could happen.

After Mark died, this habit faded away, but I often had a strong urge to resume when I saw people wearing caps with the huge round stickers left on the rim. I just wanted to say, "Excuse me, you seem to have left your price sticker on." But I never did, mainly because the caps were not actually baseball team caps. But over time it happened so often that it dawned on me it was a fashion statement.

And that in turn reminded me that when my daughters were at school, there was a craze for kids to make their own dust jackets for their books. So maybe there's an element of fashion involved, as well as protection and re-sale value.

As was pointed out above, dust jackets are important for sale of collectible books even when they are somewhat beaten up. I like to use the price slips that come with Japanese new books and, like John Fairbairn, I use them as bookmarks. Even paper bound books in Japan often come with dust jackets and many hardcover books come with cardboard sleeves which give protection to the book and, in my opinion, look nice on the shelf. If I were buying a used Japanese go book I'd prefer that it have a dust jacket or sleeve.

I don't see much demand for used go books. There are some library collections of go books, e.g. the Princeton University library or major libraries like the New York City library or the British Museum, but I think keeping books on paper is worth doing because I don't believe that digital media are truly archival. Do people really think that computer files will be preserved for thousands of years?

I feel mostly the same as you all do. It was just surprising to me to find not only the dust jackets but the marketing slips on several used Go books from different sellers. I took a picture for reference. I was not talking about the price-bookmark shown on the top. Those are useful but I have never received one with a used book. The "marketing slip" (or whatever it's called) on the bottom of the picture is what I've been talking about.



For me personally, I don't even like the dust jacket, let alone this marketing slip. I wonder if some people simply keep these things as a courtesy to the next reader. I do keep the hardcover slip-boxes (whatever those are called). I've noticed that American publishers don't like the hardcover boxes but Japanese and British publishers do. Maybe for the same reason that America has abysmal stationery.

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Thinking about whether Go book are collectible, the hardcover of Invincible with the fabric cover is maybe the "nicest" looking book I have. Even nicer than books sold as "collectible/deluxe" versions, like this recent Harper Collins publishing of The Hobbit. Though I have tossed Invincible's dust jacket if it ever came with one. But again, it's not like there is a secondary market for this type of thing (no one's selling).



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I am reluctant to do it as well. Unless it's for work, then I don't care. Even then, I will not underline but draw brackets around the paragraph/lines in the margin. I did see an interesting note taking technique in one of my books. The original owner had a light blue colored pencil that he used for underlining and the color is not nearly as distracting as normal pencil markings. I've been thinking to pick up blue pencils myself.



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Anyway, thanks for the chat. I think I will throw away these marketing slips but hold on to the dust jackets until my pile reaches some critical point.

I've been a professional book seller for over 35 years, most of that owning a store.


Yes.


No. Only savages do that.


Yes, often they make up half the value of the book.


Yes.


Yes.

If you want to keep the value of your books with dust jackets, get mylar dust jacket covers.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0073VTE88



This is simply not true. Dust jackets matter with any book that holds its value.


The proper term is 'slipcover'. And occasionally they are published with paperbacks.
When you have a book with both a dust jacket and a slipcover, do not use a dust jacket cover. This tends to make the book a tiny bit thicker and eventually destroys the slipcover.

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