Welcome to The Antiquarian Book Company…
My name is Jeremy Carson. I have been buying and selling old books for 35 years. In 2008 I wrote articles and later a column called ‘A New Look At Old Books’ for Book and Magazine Collector, all under the by-line ‘betweenthelines’. Along the way I interviewed Simon Heffer, Lucy Mangan and took a pop at the Oxfam bookshops. When the Kindle was launched in 2011 I founded CAMBO, The Campaign For Real Books.
Fortunately the campaign turned out to be unnecessary: paper books have more than managed to hold their own against the rise of the ebook. In fact sales of new books are on the rise, ebooks are slightly declining and the charm of beautiful old books remains as strong as ever. I am now a full time professional book dealer. I still love writing about beautiful old books and you can find my latest posts here.
Provincial Booksellers Fairs Association
I’m proud to be a member of the PBFA, the largest organisation of professional booksellers in the country. ( It’s like ‘check a trade’ for booksellers.) I only sell my stock at book fairs, which is why I always need more books! I sell at over thirty fairs a year, all across the country, from the South Coast to York. You can find out more about the joys of book fairs here.
I currently coordinate the PBFA Young Book Collector of the Year competition. This is the only truly inclusive book collector’s competition in the UK and is designed to encourage young people to collect books. You can find out more about it here.