Magazine on Books Puts Collectors First : Publishing: Couple fill an empty niche with their monthly publication. The guide to first editions has caught on since its January debut.

Book collectors are different from you and me.

They have less shelf space.

And they know what Brodarts are.

Brodarts are the clear plastic sleeves collectors put on their books to make sure they remain in the condition in which they were purchased (Brodart is the manufacturer of one popular brand of this class of utilitarian objects). Condition matters to collectors--a lot. Among collectors, chipped is a four-letter word, at least when applied to dust jackets.

Collectors love their dust jackets or dust wrappers, as they are properly called. And they like them unrubbed, unfaded, untorn and, heaven forfend, unchipped. The presence in pristine condition of the original paper jacket a book was sold in can add hundreds, even thousands, of dollars to its value. Ask someone who owns a first of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” worth $10,000 with dust wrapper, $400 without.

Information such as this fills the pages of Firsts, a new monthly magazine for collectors of modern first editions or the first printings of books made since about 1900. Edited by Robin and Kathryn Smiley in their Larchmont Village home, Firsts debuted in January.

As the editors explain, the magazine is aimed at the uncounted numbers of people who think a truly memorable afternoon is spent squinting at old books in a dusty shop or lovingly perusing the pages of a book catalogue.

People, in short, like the Smileys. He collects suspense writer James M. Cain, mystery writer Tony Hillerman and Idaho writer Vardis Fisher. She collects the works of novelist Shirley Jackson and those of former Los Angeles Times staffer Dorothy B. Hughes, whom Kathryn describes as “the first lady of noir fiction.”

Robin estimates that there are 25,000 to 100,000 active book collectors in the United States, although, he cautions, no one knows for sure. Moreover, he says, “there are 20 collectors for everyone who knows they are a collector.” Locally, about 8,000 people turn out for the two-day, semiannual California Antiquarian Book Fair, which ended Sunday at the Glendale Civic Center in Glendale.

As Robin explains, the idea for Firsts came to the Smileys last year at the Glendale book fair. As they went from dealer’s booth to dealer’s booth, looking for the books that make their own hearts thump, they realized that “here is a field where everybody reads and it has no enthusiast’s magazine.”

“Let’s do it,” they decided.

Robin, who is a printing broker, says he and partner Brad Munson, the magazine’s publisher, had nothing but expertise to invest in the project. Remarkably, expertise seems to have been enough. In recent years, new magazines have had the life spans of mayflies, but Firsts has not only survived, it will probably break even with its May issue--its fifth.

Since January, 1,500 subscribers have signed up at $35 a year, and another 1,000 copies have been sold through secondhand and antiquarian bookstores throughout the country. For the Smileys, one of the pleasures of the project has been to scrutinize the growing subscribers’ list for notable fellow collectors. Among the best-known subscribers to date: newscaster Roger Mudd and actor John Larroquette.

“I’m glad that magazine exists,” says Larroquette, who lives in Malibu. The co-star of TV’s “Night Court” is a passionate collector. He jokes that “it’s my favorite subject--except for Korean dancers.” Asked how long he has been haunting bookstores and salivating over catalogues, he says: “As a sickness, it’s probably been close to 10 years. As a habit, I’ve probably always had it.”

Larroquette dates his becoming a serious collector to 1983, when he was appearing in a production of Samuel Beckett’s play “Endgame” and invested several hundred dollars in a complete set of Beckett’s work.

Several months before the Irish-born writer died in 1989, the actor bought a collection of 800 or 900 items relating to Beckett, including first editions in several languages of all his books, correspondence and Beckett criticism.

“It was the pinnacle moment so far,” Larroquette says. “In one fell swoop I had this glorious collection of Samuel Beckett.” Although he has no doubt it will appreciate in value, he does not collect to make money, he says. “I’m not a speculator. I buy books to own them and read them and cherish them.

“There are so many authors and so little time,” he sighs.

Other word-smitten collectors agree. Glenn Souza is an Eagle Rock collector who has contributed a three-part series on collecting gambling literature to Firsts. A former Los Angeles Police Department detective who specialized in illegal gambling, Souza says he began reading crime and mystery fiction when he was a teen-ager. “I found something there that was so exciting I went into a life of crime, so to speak,” he recalls.

“Every collection has to have a focus,” says Souza, explaining why he decided to acquire firsts of Walter Tevis’ “The Hustler” and other gambling-related books. Souza’s 7,000 to 8,000 volumes include such rarities as an 1813 English book on probabilities, called “The Doctrine of Chances,” for which 10 years ago he happily plunked down $200. The book highest on his wish list is Dashiell Hammett’s “The Glass Key,” not Hammett’s best, he admits, but the master’s one book on gambling.

Crime fiction and related books are probably the hottest field in book collecting today. Firsts will devote its June issue to the genre. Several book dealers in the Los Angeles area specialize in mystery, crime and the like, including Firsts contributor John Mitchell of Pasadena. Mysterious Bookshop in West Hollywood also stocks mostly suspense, crime and similar books, including 10,000 to 12,000 rare and collectible books.

“A tremendous amount of money is being spent in the field,” says manager Shelly McArthur, who estimates that 60% to 70% of his clients are collectors. To his enormous satisfaction, he has one regular customer (not in the entertainment industry) who has given McArthur carte blanche to buy any of a long list of desired books at any reasonable price.

Raymond Chandler is always in demand, according to McArthur, and so are good hard-boiled and noir writers from the 1950s. Recently, the interest in Agatha Christie materials has surged.

McArthur says his new and younger collectors are always asking which authors they should buy now before the price of their books soars. “Everybody’s trying to guess who the new Sue Grafton for collectibility will be,” says McArthur, referring to the Santa Barbara writer whose first Kinsey Milhone mystery, “A Is for Alibi,” published in 1982, commands $600 or more.

Firsts features information on coming book fairs, auctions and signings throughout the country. Robin says the best-read feature appears to be the auction and catalogue report, which advises readers on recent prices asked or received for selected books.

Books, as Robin points out, are worth what people are willing to pay for them. Recently, Heritage Book Shop of West Hollywood was offering a very good first of Hemingway’s “In Our Time” for $8,500. It is Hemingway’s rarest book--only 170 copies were originally printed.

Robin speculates that the magazine has been successful because it takes a non-stuffy approach to collecting. The journal isn’t crammed with bibliographical minutiae, although the monthly column “Points” does deal with such potentially useful esoterica as the fact that some firsts of Len Deighton’s book “Horse Under Water” have plain black endpapers, while some have crossword puzzles on the endpapers.

Firsts is also attractive, especially its covers, each of which features the dust wrapper of a collectible book.

“Strangely enough, we patterned it on Cosmopolitan,” Robin says of the cover design. “Cosmopolitan has a similar girl in a slightly different pose in a different color on every cover. But the design elements are always the same. You can see it across the room and say, ‘That’s Cosmopolitan.’ We tried to do the same thing with a book.”

The Smileys smile at the pleasure book collecting gives them. “It’s a glorious and wonderful treasure hunt,” says Kathryn.

And unlike the collector of seashells or mutual funds, the book collector acquires something that speaks to him or her in an important, intimate way. Collector Larroquette, suddenly serious, puts it nicely: “I don’t feel quite as lonely in life when I have lots of books around me.”