Edition and issue are the first test
First edition, first impression; later issue; limited edition with its number. Bidders read your bibliographic note for the points that confirm it.
Markets · Books, Manuscripts, Maps & Ephemera
Books and manuscripts catalogued with edition, binding and collation
A book buyer wants the edition, the binding and whether the copy is complete before the estimate. Auctionomy gives your house lot pages that carry your full bibliographic description, on your own website.
How your bidders buy
What your bidders read for
Binding and completeness come next
Contemporary calf or later morocco, the collation, any leaves in facsimile, foxing, and plates complete or not. A copy is only as good as the faults it declares.
Manuscripts and archives turn on content
For letters, documents and archives, who wrote, to whom, when and about what is the lot. A careful summary sells a manuscript better than a photograph alone.
Catalogued your way
Every line of the entry has its place
Description, estimate, condition and provenance are separate parts of every lot on Auctionomy, and each one shows on the lot page. The entry shown here is an illustration, written the way the trade writes it.
Illustrative lot · fictional
[Travel]. An account of a voyage to the South Seas, first edition, London, 1773
Three volumes, quarto, with folding maps and engraved plates. Contemporary calf, rebacked, spines gilt.
Estimate £1,800–2,500
- Condition
- Light foxing to some plates, one folding map with a short repaired tear. Bindings rubbed at the extremities. Collated complete.
- Provenance
- Armorial bookplate of an English country house library.
Your sale on Auctionomy
Run the way your house runs it
Your full bibliographic description
Each lot carries your title and description in your own house style, from short-title through to collation and references.
Condition notes bidders can trust
Foxing, rebacking, worn joints and missing plates go in the condition notes on the lot page, next to the images that show them.
Sections your bidders know
Define categories for travel, natural history, literature, maps or autographs, and bidders filter or search by author and title.
Timed sales for long catalogues
Book sales run to hundreds of lots; a timed sale lets bidders work through them, leave absentee bids and see the close extend when a late bid lands.
Your trade, your house
Fluent in the trade, and unmistakably yours
Harrowby & Fenn Auctioneers is a demonstration house: fictional, built on Auctionomy to show how a house specialising in books, manuscripts, maps & ephemera looks on the platform. Its name, colours, typeface and page layout are its own, assembled from the same components every house uses. Yours would carry your name, your logo and your look, on your own domain.
No commission on the hammer price
A flat subscription, agreed with your house. Your bidders register with you, and the buyer's premium you set is yours.