Evening Land Books
Evening Land Books is a rare book firm. I founded it alongside my partner, Kristina Intinarelli. We specialize in modern first editions, but in general our inventory contains anything we find culturally, historically, or artistically consequential. We primarily operate online from our home in Champaign, IL, and occasionally attend pop-ups and book fairs. We launched the business with a series of Guiding Principles, chief among them to make book collecting an exciting and accessible pastime for everyone. We are members of the International Online Booksellers Association (IOBA) and the Midwest Antiquarian Booksellers Association (MWABA). Through our work with clients, institutions, and fellow booksellers, we have continued to grow and make a broader impact on the book trade.
My CV highlights some of my experiences and expertise with rare books, but if you’d like to learn more, I suggest you browse our inventory. I personally catalogue, collate, and describe every item in our shop. I also handle web development. Kristina and I collaborate on sourcing new inventory and processing sales. Each of us maintains relationships with dedicated collectors. If you’d like to work with us in building a book collection, please feel free to reach out. We’ll be happy to help.
A small sample of our selection: signed first editions of The Color Purple, Long Walk to Freedom, and Rabbit, Run
Collector’s Counsel: An Informational Series for Book Collectors
As a way to adhere to our Guiding Principles, I also provide resources for book collectors and the general public. I publish these resources to our blog, The Collector’s Counsel. They include a list of nearly 200 first edition points by publisher, a glossary of over 300 book terms, a transparent breakdown of our condition grading scales, and more. If you’d like to utilize or review these resources, follow the links below:
First Edition Information by Publisher
This is our list of nearly 200 publishers and their known issue points. This resource is useful for doing preliminary assessments or research on your editions and their publishers. We compiled this information from dozens of bibliographies, online resources, and our own inventory database. We then reviewed examples to verify the listed edition points. It is one of the largest online resources for issue points by publisher.
A Glossary of Book Terms
This is our list of over 300 terms related to books, printing, and book collecting. The entries go beyond simple dictionary definitions with each term given a thorough explanation. There is a rich history of glossaries in the book trade and no shortage of resources, but our glossary is free, accessible, and comprehensive. It also tries to frame the jargon of book collecting in its appropriate contexts.
A List of Common Acronyms
We’ve compiled the following list of common acronyms. These acronyms are useful to the cataloguer and experienced collector, but they can be alienating to new collectors who would have no way of knowing their full spellings. We therefore thought it would be helpful to compile this brief resource.
Condition Grading Scales
We don’t hope to achieve a standardization of condition grading scales across the book trade. That is be beyond our control. We can, however, clarify our own condition grading scales. In that regard, we provide this resource. It describes our condition grading scale in detail. It also addresses the complicated and ranging expectations of condition in the book trade.
Evening Land Books on Social Media
I’ve also been active in promoting the rare book trade and our business online. In particular, I’ve built resources on BlueSky, the microblogging/social media platform. These resources do not directly promote Evening Land Books. However, they function as a way to fulfill our second Guiding Principle: our responsibility to foster reading and collecting interests for our clients and our communities. The resources I’ve developed include a Rare Books feed and an Independent Bookseller Starter Pack. You do not need a BlueSky account to enjoy these resources, but I hope you make the leap to that platform. It is still growing, and its future may be uncertain, but in my opinion, it holds promise as a place online where individuals have more algorithmic control over the content they consume.
Here’s a link to the Rare Books feed, in case you’re interested:
I created a BlueSky feed for all things Rare Books: bsky.app/profile/did:… Some small Regex adjustments may yet be in order, but feel free to check it out.
— Matthew Kollmer (@matthewkollmer.bsky.social) Aug 22, 2024 at 12:15 PM
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Like most businesses, we also have a social media presence on larger platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Threads. But we are most active on Instagram. I implore you to follow us there, if you don’t mind. Quite honestly, I don’t enjoy the marketing end of running a small business, especially not on Meta’s platforms where shrouded algorithms control our reach more than anything else. So, a simple ‘like’ or ‘follow’ saves us the work of steering the algorithm to you. Plus, our posts consistently highlight books in our inventory, so it’s a good way to keep up with our recent acquisitions.
Here is our Instagram profile:
Get in Touch
Finally, by all means, feel free to Contact Me directly if I can help with anything book-related. I maintain the business and my connections in the rare book trade because I genuinely enjoy it, so I’ll always be happy to hear about your bookish interests, whether they’re about collecting, bibliographic research, or something else.