For just 75,000 euro (about $95,000) you can buy a piece of the moon: a rock housed under glass that comes with a special-edition copy of the book Norman Mailer, Moonfire: The Epic Journey of Apollo 11. But that’s not all you’ll get from publisher Taschen when you purchase one of these 12 books. In addition to the moon rock, the book arrives with a framed and numbered limited-edition photographic print of Buzz Aldrin, signed by the astronaut.
Still, the publisher hopes that the book itself, a 17-by-14-inch, 350-page tome, is the real draw. It contains excerpts from Mailer’s essay on the first moon landing and his handwritten notes speculating on the psychology of astronauts, alongside archival photos of these men in training at the NASA facilities and in space. Nevertheless, the special edition of the book also comes with its own stand, one with legs that look like those of a lunar landing module and a top that resembles the surface of the moon.
Obviously this is no ordinary coffee-table book. It’s one of a new breed of luxury, extremely limited-edition titles in which publishers present pieces of cultural history (sometimes literally, as in the case of the moon rocks), with eye-popping illustrations and new or specially commissioned editorial material. These books marry the obsessions of popular culture with breathtaking photography to create bound works of lasting artistic value.
And these offerings, like any true piece of art, can dramatically increase in value over time. For example, Taschen published a limited-edition book featuring the work of fashion photographer Helmut Newton in 2000. While copies of the original edition sold for $1,500, these days you would be lucky to find a copy for less than 10 times that amount.
Books of Art
The titles in this luxury category can retail for anywhere from $500 to $100,000, in part because they function like limited-edition prints. There may be just a few numbered copies of each title, and they may come in huge trim sizes, with hundreds of full-color, poster-sized photographs. Yet, as is also the case with prints and all art, not all limited-edition titles are worth collecting.
According to Murat Ertug, the marketing director for Ertug & Kocabiyik Publications, the key to producing a title that is also a work of art is to focus on the details of craftsmanship. “It’s a romantic relationship with publishing,” says Ertug. “To make a small series of books, on handmade paper, with bindings handmade by Italian craftsmen who love what they are doing is so different from producing books that are made to sell in masses. With our books, you don’t see any bindings, any stitches in the middle. All these details make the books different.”
Prosper Assouline, publisher at Assouline Publishing, couldn’t agree more. “The ultimate books are made by hand,” he says. “They are completely unique and they sell out immediately.” Assouline has produced beautiful, high-quality books celebrating the work of fashion icons such as Tommy Hilfiger and Chanel, architect Oscar Niemeyer, fashion model Veruschka, and Barbie.
While some luxury titles caption an audience by featuring the work of recognizable celebrities, others create interest (and value) by collecting spectacular photography into one volume. One of Ertug & Kocabiyik’s most recent books is called Temples of Knowledge, and it features the photography of Murat’s brother Ahmet, who toured Europe’s great library collections and photographed them as sanctuaries, as sacred spaces of learning. Commissioned essays detail each library’s history. Each of the limited editions retails for $15,000.
The title has been so successful that Ahmet returned to Europe to produce another book, Palaces of Music, which features the continent’s great opera houses. The first 25 of these books also cost $15,000, while a smaller-scale edition will sell for $7,500.
The publisher teNeues has worked with a single photographer to produce a collection of books about Africa, the latest of which is called The Eyes Over Africa XXL. The collector’s edition is a $5,000, 500-page book of oversized photographs of the continent, taken by photographer Michael Poliza, who flew in a helicopter over much of Africa to capture the images for the book. Many of the photographs are aerial shots of cityscapes and remote vistas, but Eyes also includes stunning close-ups of wildlife and of people. It comes with an individually signed and numbered lithographic print. teNeus produced only 300 examples of the collector’s edition, each of which Poliza signed. “Oprah saw that book and fell in love with it,” says associate editor Anshana Arora. Poliza’s next book, called Classic Africa, will be available next spring.
Extras Are Special
Why are these titles so expensive? One reason is that the books are larger than regular books in terms of the number of pages and the page size. Sometimes, accompaniments such as moon rocks will raise the price. For example, Assouline’s Oscar Neimeyer book costs $550, and for an additional $8,000 you can buy a lectern designed by the architect.
Luxury titles often include novelty features such as pages that fold out, which cost more to print. Some have hand-tipped photographs—high-quality photographs that have been mounted on the page instead of printed on a press with the rest of the book. Most of these books feature unusual, full-color photography and are hand-bound with covers wrapped in linen or ultra-suede.
If you do decide to purchase a luxury title, be sure you understand how large the edition is from which you are buying. Like limited-edition prints, these titles rely on scarcity to add and maintain value.
Edition and Subtraction
Taschen often releases books in multiple editions. Its high-priced art editions usually consist of 50 to 200 copies. In some cases the books are signed by the photographer or artist, and like prints, they often are numbered. “The model benefits the end consumer rather than the wholesaler,” says Creed Poulson, public relations manager at Taschen. He isn’t referring solely to those consumers who collect books; he’s also talking about those who intend to resell them. “With the secondary markets, such as eBay, you can turn a profit,” he says.
Like many luxury-book publishers, Taschen also releases less-pricey, larger-volume editions of its books. In addition to its art editions, Taschen produces collector’s editions that might consist of 1,500 copies and are not signed or numbered. And then a trade edition comes out that might be smaller in size and has a print run of several thousand copies and costs considerably less, perhaps $100. Neither the collector’s edition or the trade edition is likely to increase significantly in value over time.
The great thing about this model, says Poulson, is that it can be contracted or expanded as needed, depending on the subject matter. The company has created a 750-page book of the art of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, and the art edition consists of just six copies, each retailing at $50,000. “We’ve sold three of them already,” says Poulson. Numbers 7 through 100 of this edition cost $5,000 each.
At the other end of the model is Taschen’s book about Muhammad Ali called The Greatest of All Time and colloquially known as GOAT, for which there are 1,000 copies in the $15,000 autographed Champ’s Edition and another 9,000 copies in the collector’s edition, priced at $4,500 apiece. A trade edition is expected to be published this spring.
Something for Everyone
Kraken Opus has released its Major League Baseball Opus in three different versions. The first is called the Marquis, a limited edition of 1,000 copies that sells for $3,000 each. The Marquis Opus has a trim size of 20 by 20 inches and contains 790 pages, many of them photographs of the early days of the game. A second version, called the Classic, has a 13-by-18-inch trim size, more like that of a traditional coffee-table book, and 428 pages. This comes in a limited edition of 5,000 copies. A third edition will be available at major league stadiums as a keepsake. It will contain 12 chapters of 30 pages each and will be available for about $20.
The idea, according to Mark Skelly, the book’s executive producer, is to sell one version or another to almost everyone who attends a baseball game. “I look at each one of those 30 stadiums as a distribution channel,” he says.
In the luxury market, this idea of offering different levels of value and exclusivity is not unique to book publishers. After all, Mercedes-Benz sells the $36,000 C300 luxury sedan. But it also offers the S65 AMG luxury sedan, for $200,000.