Selling Very Old Books Today

www.hrc.utexas.edu Booksellers Rebecca Romney (Type Punch Matrix) and Bill Cotter (W. S. Cotter Rare Books) will join Dr. Aaron T. Pratt, the Ransom Center's Pforzheimer Curator, to discuss current trends in the rare book trade. Learn which old books are most attractive to today's collectors and take a behind-the-curtain look at some of the business strategies that keep antiquarian bookselling profitable in 2023.
Bill Cotter is the founder of W. S. Cotter Rare Books. Bill has always been involved with books in one way or another, first as an avid reader, then as a collector. In the 90s he discovered bookbinding and restoration, and began making prop books for the film industry. Buying and selling rare books was a natural next step. Bill generally trades in manuscripts and printed books produced before 1800. He has a parallel avocation as a writer, and old books feature in most of his novels and stories. Bill lives in Austin with his wife and business partner, Krissy Olson.
Rebecca Romney is the co-founder of the rare book firm Type Punch Matrix, based in the Washington DC area. Since 2011 she has appeared as the rare book specialist on the History Channel’s show Pawn Stars, and was featured in the documentary The Booksellers. Rebecca is the author of the book Printer’s Error: Irreverent Stories from Book History (HarperCollins; with JP Romney), The Romance Novel in English: A Survey in Rare Books (a catalogue of a rare book collection she placed at the Lilly Library), and the forthcoming Jane Austen's Bookshelf: Rediscovering Her Favorite Women Writers (Simon & Schuster). She is also the co-founder of the Honey & Wax Book Collecting Prize.