Anyone who decides to start collecting books has this basic decision to make - which author, or authors, am I going to concentrate on? It does not work well to collect anything you happen to see that's worth collecting, because it won't be long before your family will be agitating about getting a bigger house.

The easiest way of starting is to pick a contemporary author whose work you like, and buy his or her books as soon as they come out. What you're after is a first edition, in its first printing. (Some people develop into specialised collectors, who want only limited editions, or want only books associated with famous people or something of that sort. Don't try to run before you can walk. Start with simple first editions.) Don't wait for any length of time before you buy a newly-published book, because you'll run the risk that the book will have gone into a second printing. Any decent bookshop will send you a copy in good shape, especially if you tell them you're a collector. If you want to read the book as well as collect it, get two and treat one of them as untouchable.

As you gain a little confidence, look on the publisher's website to see if the author is going on a tour of bookshops to sign copies for their customers. Often, you can get one of them to send you a book the author's signed, and there is generally no charge for that service. I collect a couple of authors by buying their books as they are published, and I have standing orders with one specialist bookshop to send me signed copies as soon as they get them. You may also find that the publisher is prepared to sell, direct to the customer, special editions - probably better-bound than the trade edition, and produced in limited numbers.

Look on the Internet for a bibliography, or a list of books your author has published. Your aim, as a new collector, is to acquire a first edition of everything he or she has published, over time. So in addition to buying new books as they are published, you are adding older books to your collection by buying them from dealers, or perhaps from an auction site like eBay.

Publishers almost never say precisely how many books they publish in a particular edition. Sometimes, the number of books in the first edition of a really popular author will be huge, and the supply of new copies will be sufficient to meet the demand for a long time. But if your author is a little less popular, be prepared for the prices to rise sharply once the books have left the booksellers' shelves.

When I said last week that collecting books had become easier because of the Internet, I did not mean that the popular auction site, eBay, should get the credit. In fact, book selling on eBay has increased the chances that an unwary collector is going to be cheated, or persuaded to buy something sub-standard from an unscrupulous seller, or will buy something substandard from a seller who simply doesn't know what he's doing.

Signatures are the engine of one type of scam. A book that has been signed by its author can be worth significantly more than the unsigned version. Signed books have recently become very fashionable, indeed, much to the chagrin of the authors who have to do the signing. The demand has become so great that James Ellroy, according to a recent article by Lawrence Block, had to sign the entire first printing of his new book, "My Dark Places".

The publisher had 65,000 in that run, so you can imagine what fun he had for a few days. Some authors won't play the signing game, and as a result, any book they do sign is likely to be worth a bundle. The contemporary American writer Thomas Pynchon is famous for not liking to sign books. I went looking on the Internet last week to see if I could find a signed copy of any one of them. There was one, "The Crying of Lot 49", which is one of his early novels. An ordinary, fine first of that particular book is worth about $1,000. Julian's Books in New York is selling a signed copy for $51,000.

What sometimes happens on eBay is that because of that big difference in value, an unscrupulous seller will forge a signature, sometimes quite crudely, to increase his profit. An unwary collector might not take the trouble to find out what the author's signature looks like, or might not notice the difference, or might simply think the author was just having a bad day when he signed it. Another difficulty with signatures is caused when a seller describes a book as signed, or describes it in such a way that buyers are led not to notice that the book is simply being sold together with a separate piece of paper that has the author's signature on it.

In the same way, some sellers will sell a book as a first edition, when in fact it is simply a first edition of the book published in another country. Or they'll say it's a first edition, but neglect to mention it's a later printing in the first edition. I don't want to mislead you into thinking there is more skulduggery going on than there really is. The crooks are in a tiny minority. Over 99.9 percent of eBay sellers are honest, conscientious folk who wouldn't dream of deliberately cheating you. Some of the honest ones, though, are not as familiar with the procedures to follow in selling books for their rarity. They'll grade a book poorly, and out of ignorance, lead you to believe that it is in better shape than it is, or will fail to mention something important to a collector, like a previous owner's signature or a little tear in the dust jacket.

Some amateur sellers don't take as much care as they should in packing books for shipment. I got a book in the mail last year that had been sold to me as "like new". It had been put, carelessly, in a thin envelope that was far too big for it, and in which it sloshed around for a week on the way here. When it arrived, the dust jacket was torn in three places and the front and back covers had been bent in different directions, obviously in separate bangs of some kind. If it truly was a "like new" copy when it left the seller, it had been reduced to an uncollectible state when it arrived, and all I could do was put the seller (it was like new when I put it in the mail, honest!) on a list of those from whom I won't buy again.

In truth, though, the person you need to be most wary of in eBay auctions is yourself. The thrill of beating others in an auction is a powerful incentive to get good and silly. There are four steps you should always force yourself to take if you're buying books (or anything for that matter) on eBay. Number one, read the seller's description carefully so that you don't fool yourself into believing you're buying something you're not.

Bermudians should pay particular attention to whether the seller is prepared to ship internationally. Many of them won't. If you don't understand something, e-mail the seller and get an explanation. If the seller doesn't respond, chances are you're better off looking elsewhere. Number two, make a point of checking the seller's credentials. Look at the comments other people make about him, or her. If there's something in there that makes you nervous, skip that auction and wait until the item you're looking for comes up again.

Number three, always check the value of the book you want to buy by looking it up on one of the services that search in dealers' inventories for what you want (I use BookFinder.com, but there are lots of them). There isn't a lot of point in buying on eBay unless you're getting the book for less than you would pay a dealer for it.

Number four, force yourself to understand that miracles do not happen. If somebody is selling something rare for a lot less than your research indicates should be the case, there's probably a scam in there somewhere, and you're better off not putting yourself at risk. By far your best and safest bet in book collecting, certainly while you're learning the tricks of the trade, is to confine yourself to buying from dealers. I mentioned BookFinder.com, a service I use that searches the databases of many book dealers for whatever it is you're looking for. These are the ones I know about. There are undoubtedly others.

AbeBooks http://dogbert.abebooks.com;

Alibris http://www.alibris.com;

Amazon http://amazon.com;

AntiQbooks http://www.antiqbook.com;

Biblio http://www.biblio.com;

Biblio Direct http://www.bibliodirect.com;

Bibliology http://www.bibliology.com;

Books and Collectibles http://www.booksandcollectibles.com;

Choosebooks http://www.choosebooks.com;

Int. League of Antiquarian Booksellers http://www.ilabdatabase.com;

TomFolio - http://www.tomfolio.com

Someone in the business of selling books isn't likely to cheat - book collectors are a closely-knit bunch, and word would get around very, very quickly. Some dealers might push the envelope as far as prices are concerned, but using one of these services will give you a pretty good idea of which prices are justified and which are over the top. If you have questions, by all means e-mail me at gshorto@ibl.bm. I'd be glad to help in any way I can.

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