Welcome!
Bibliomania is an antiquarian book business located just outside Schenectady, NY. "Where browsers are always welcome" was our motto when we first opened our doors in September, 1981, and we extend this invitation to you, our online customer. Our site is updated almost every day, making a stop here the next best thing to visiting the shop, which was located on Jay Street for twenty-seven years before moving online. Our online sales, along with research and catalogs, takes up most of our time making our 35 years of experience in the book business now available to more readers. It is our goal to create an internet site that compares to a store experience. It's not the same, of course, but has its convenience, that in browsing our listings you are likely to find books that you have wanted for years, as well as treasures you never knew existed. We invite you now to check our highlights below, follow one of our many category links to see our listings. If somehow you do not see what you were looking for, send an Email to Bill and we'll check the shelves for you. After many hours installing a shopping cart on this web site a couple years ago, we discovered it did not serve our needs or our customers to our satisfaction. We are setting up another system, but until it is complete, please check our "Ordering" page above for current ordering instructions if an "add to cart" button is not available..
Our new shopping cart is currently being installed. It may take several weeks, and as always, we are working a few bugs out as we go along. This shopping cart is operated through Google Wallet, which requires you to open an account, but we believe the added security will offset any extra effort with your initial order. Customers who have used it so far seem satisfied, and it works well on our end. New buttons will appear every day, and every item with a button can be ordered online and is ready for shipping. It has given us a chance to review our inventory, and you will find new, lower prices on many items, as well as many additions in most categories. We have worked our way through most of the autographs, and are working on books, photographs, and ephemera. In addition to ordering online, you can always contact us to order items without buttons, ask additional questions, or to reserve and pay by check or money order, Paypal, or another method.
Free Shipping on Orders Over $99.00
We are currently offering free shipping on all U.S. orders over $99.00. If you order from our Google Wallet shopping cart the savings should be reflected in the total. If not - trust us, we will remove the shipping charge before processing your order. This free shipping offer will continue until further notice. Thanks, and happy shopping.
Please Check our Online Inventory:
BOOKS Books in more than twenty categories
AUTOGRAPHS Signatures, letters, and documents, American & international
MAPS American and foreign historical maps
ART Original paintings, prints, drawings, and posters
PHOTOGRAPHS Historical images of the Adirondacks and elsewhere
EPHEMERA Historical and cultural paper items, advertising, sheet music, broadsides, and unusual paper items
MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS Guitars, mandolins, violins, and other stringed instruments for sale
CURRENT CATALOG View our current mail-order catalog online
NEW
ARRIVALS AND MONTHLY SPECIALS Significant new
items in our stock and special markdowns
What's New?
More Stuff Coming Soon!
We recently made arrangements to vastly increase the size of our web site, and have already started to add new items and categories. Check our Americana and Sporting sections for dozens of new titles, with more to come every day. The added spaces means not only room for more merchandise, but also for more photos, so you can take a look a your prospective purchase. As always, feel free to contact us for a photo or scan of any item you are interested in purchasing.
Thirty Years -1981-2011
In June of 1981, I returned to Schenectady from California to open my bookshop. By July, I had rented a storefront on Jay Street in the city, and the store officially opened the first weekend in September. There were many, many good years, and it was fun to be there every day, adding new books to the shelves and selling them to our many customers.
My first important piece of office equipment was a good typewriter to use in preparing catalogs. A computer later made those catalogs more attractive and easier to produce, but we did not yet realize the impact it would have on our business and the future. We established a web site many years ago, but thought of it merely as a complement to our store, catalog, and book fair sales. Like so many other shops, though, we found it account for more of our time and more of our sales. Although only a small portion of our stock was listed on the site, people assumed everything was there, and collectors seemed to spend more time on the Internet than searching the bookshops. Reluctantly and regretfully, a decision was made to close the shop and work from home in 2008. A "virtual bookstore" (does anyone use that term anymore?) is not the same as one of bricks and mortar, but it serves our needs at this time.
Our new shopping cart is almost completed. You may use the checkout buttons currently on this site. Please contact us to order items without buttons. Please check our "Ordering" page above for current ordering instructions.
Would a picture help? Many
customers have requested scans or photos of items listed on our site when
considering a purchase. If you haven't thought of it, please ask; we can
usually e-mail a photo or scan of almost any item to you in a day or so.
What is my old book worth? We get that question a lot, and while we do not appraise items we cannot personally examine, we can try to answer some of your questions. If you live near Albany, NY, Bill Healy, Bibliomania's owner, periodically gives a one-night seminar on that subject for the Knowledge Network (www.knowledgenetwork.org). Check their web site for enrollment information.
Serving the book community
Last September
we celebrated our 30th year in business - we never doubted it
would happen when we opened, but our business has developed over the years in
ways we never imagined. One of my first
equipment purchases was a good typewriter to produce catalogs. I never dreamed
of using a computer, and could not even conceive of the internet or a web site.
We still think of ourselves as a real book shop, though, even though we are no
longer open to customers at the moment. You can view some of our best offerings on this site. These are only some of our better items; in the evening, when I
update the site, I am surprised at the number of good books we have sold that do
not appear on these pages. I'm working as fast as I can.
We were once featured in an article in
The Capital District Business Review,
where an editorial called us "the internet done
right." As I struggle with computer
glitches and other problems I have my doubts,
but we will try to make your internet experience with us as pleasant as
a visit to our shop.
CATALOG No. 109 is available!
We have promised this catalog for several months,
and after much consideration, we have decided that this catalog and those in the
near future will only be available online. This is a
departure from our practice of thirty years, but it is the only way to
eliminate the time lag that occurs when paper catalogs travel by first class
mail.
If you are not on our mailing list, please e-mail us to receive a copy at
bookhunter52@aol.com -
or click here to view our last catalog now. In addition to this
site, we issue fairly regular catalogs in various
subjects. In 2002, we reached our longtime goal of issuing one per month, and
have mostly continued the practice in 2003, 2004, and 2005, before cutting back
a bit in recent years.
We may still have copies of some past catalogs available on request. Many
items have been sold, of course, but some very fine ones are still in stock. You
will usually find them on this web site, since available items are listed in
their appropriate subject categories.
What we sell
Bibliomania offers a wide selection of good used books in
most fields, as well as first and rare editions of literature and
Americana. Bibliomania is particularly
well known for its books and materials on the Adirondack Mountains and New York
State history. We usually have strong
holdings in literature, photography, music, biographies, and books about books.
In the past few years this store has also acquired some interesting autographs,
trade cards, photographs, pamphlets, prints, bookplates, illustrations, and
other antiques & ephemera. Our stock changes daily, and while more of our
offerings will appear online, it will be a while before most of our items appear
on this site. We have become a bit more specialized since closing the shop, but we are
still interested in all types of good books. Only a small portion of our stock is available here, but we try to add new
items every day.
Bill
Healy, the owner, is the author of two books, The Adirondacks: A Special World (Utica: North Country Books, 1986, 1993) and The High Peaks of Essex: The Adirondack Mountains
of Orson Schofield Phelps (Fleischmanns: Purple Mountain Press, 1992, 1998).
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We update and refresh our pages daily:
05/05/12
Thank you for visiting!