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On author's deaths and the effect on their book prices ...

I know this is a rather morbid topic, but I don't think any booksellers can deny that there seems to be an association between the death of an author and the subsequent demand for their books. 

 

I think it might be helpful if we, as booksellers, inform each other of the deaths of any authors that may have flown under the radar.

 

You would think, given the rampant and ubiquitous social media transmitting all sorts of information, that any author's death, no matter how obscure, would not be overlooked, but I was recently shocked to discover that Theodore Hesburgh, longtime president of Notre Dame University and author of several books, passed away on February 26 at the the age of 97.  

 

Knowing his advanced age, I had been holding onto a book signed by him.  Yet, although I consider myself a fairly avid news consumer, I didn't learn of his passing until less than a week ago and that was only when I happened to flip through a month-old Catholic newspaper and saw a story about it.

 

I promptly listed the book, albeit about a month later than the ideal time, and fortunately got a bid on it.

 

However, I think it might be helpful to use this thread to inform each other of the passing of any authors.  Not everyone garners the level of attention of Tom Clancy.    

 

 

 

 

 

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Re: On author's deaths and the effect on their book prices ...

And another one to follow soon ...

Message 46 of 101
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Re: On author's deaths and the effect on their book prices ...

They always go in threes. Not sure if the baseball player fits in, but if not then there'll be another two 'famous' obituaries along fairly soon. It might take a few days, but celebrities are quite often late.

 

One bit of sad news on this page might just help somebody learn to read, if a rise in achieveable book prices follows the demise of an author. We had a very nice copy of the UK first of Oliver Sacks's 'Awakenings' donated to the shop. Sadly it isn't signed, and now never will be. But hopefully it will find a generous buyer - we're still short on making the shop rent for next year, so a bit of luck involved in the sales of the 'better' donations would be welcome.

 

I'm a bit stuck on whether I should offer the Jack 'Henry Patterson' Higgins pair that we have on eBay, or some other venue. But this thread has brought up another possibility. I mean, he's 86. Hmm. I wonder if the charity would go for the idea of buying me a ticket to Jersey so I can try to get them signed. Might well be a very good investment - the unsigned copies are currently £150 to £220 for 'Phoenix' and, for 'Pay The Devil', the only number available is £750, which is the price of the copy currently being offered by a James M. Pickard on ABE.

 

From the evidence of the effect the demise of other 'big name' authors has on nice firsts of their early titles (Pratchett's 'Colour of Magic' shot up to £8,500 unsigned and £12,500 signed, his later work not doing anything different unsigned, but increasing by 100s of percent if bearing his marks), I'm getting the feeling a trip to Jersey might be barely short of essential. 

 

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A preoccupation with the next world is a clear indication of an inability to cope credibly with this one.
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Message 47 of 101
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Re: On author's deaths and the effect on their book prices ...

'Wallander' writer Henning Mankell dies aged 67

 

Henning Mankell, the internationally renowned Swedish crime writer whose books about the gloomy, soul-searching police inspector Kurt Wallander enticed readers around the world, died early Monday, his publisher said.

 

The hesitant figurehead of Scandinavian crime fiction, who last year revealed he had cancer, died in the southwestern city of Goteborg, his publisher, Leopard, said in a statement on its website.

 

His novels and plays sold more than 40 million copies worldwide.

 

Following in the footsteps of the popular 1960s Swedish crime-writing duo of Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo, Mankell's Wallander series helped define the Scandinavian genre that became known as Nordic noir. Set in the bleak landscapes of southern Sweden, the series drew on the dark, morally complex moods of its main protagonist and was heavily infused with social commentary.


Source & rest of article: http://tinyurl.com/o55g797

 

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Message 48 of 101
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The Name of the Rose author Umberto Eco dies aged 84


Italian author Umberto Eco, best known for the international best-seller The Name Of The Rose, has died.


Lori Glazer of Eco's American publisher, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, said that Eco died on Friday aged 84. She could not immediately confirm the cause of death or where he died.


The Name Of The Rose, a murder mystery set in the 14th century, was published in 1980 and caught on with readers worldwide. His other books included Foucault's Pendulum, The Prague Cemetery and The Island Of The Day Before.


Eco was fascinated with the obscure and the mundane, and his books were both engaging narratives and philosophical and intellectual exercises. The bearded, heavy-set scholar, critic and novelist took on the esoteric theory of semiotics, the study of signs and symbols in language; popular culture heroes like James Bond; and the technical languages of the Internet.


The Name Of The Rose transformed him from an academic to international celebrity, especially after the medieval thriller set in a monastery was made into a film starring Sean Connery in 1986. The book sold millions of copies, no mean feat for a narrative filled with partially translated Latin quotes and puzzling musings on the nature of symbols.


But Eco talked about his inspiration with characteristic irony: "I began writing ... prodded by a seminal idea: I felt like poisoning a monk."


His second novel, Foucault's Pendulum, in 1988, a byzantine tale of plotting publishers and secret sects also styled as a thriller, was successful, too -though it was so complicated that an annotated guide accompanied it to help the reader follow the plot.


Source & read more: http://tinyurl.com/gucw76e

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Message 49 of 101
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Re: On author's deaths and the effect on their book prices ...


@lyceumdreams wrote:
 
 
 
 
 
 
"A man who holds a book until the tail end learns something he can learn in no other way."

 

True, Michael.  While I haven't actually owned these remains of an oldish book since the Third Intermediate Period, apparently it was time, today, to sell them.  The author's been dead since the Twenty-first Dynasty (a bit more than three thousand years), and sometimes that's all the time one needs.

 

davidscan1.jpg

 

 

Message 50 of 101
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Re: On author's deaths and the effect on their book prices ...

Some Harper Lee sales on eBay since her death:

 

http://tinyurl.com/j3lhfqg

 
The signed 2nd printing at the top of the results sold on a best offer of $12,000.
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Pat Conroy, best-selling author of ‘Great Santini’ and ‘Prince of Tides,’ dies.


“The water is wide but he has now crossed over." - Said his wife novelist Cassandra King Conroy


One of Conroy's most notable works was his 1986 book, "The Prince of Tides." Five years later, it was adapted into a popular movie featuring Barbra Streisand and Nick Nolte, turning the author into a household name. "The Great Santini," one of 11 books he wrote, was also adapted into a film featuring Robert Duvall. Conroy's books have sold millions of copies worldwide and include "The Boo," "The Water is Wide," "The Lords of Discipline, " and "Beach Music."


Beaufort’s prince Pat Conroy rests at home

 

Pat Conroy, who arrived in Beaufort as a teenage Marine brat and found both a home and palette for his best-selling novels, died Friday at his home on Battery Creek.

 

His lyrical novels painted harsh pictures of inadequate schools, an abusive father and South Carolina’s military college, The Citadel. He tackled threats to the Lowcountry environment with equal vigor. But he loved each of his subjects, and the town he adopted after 23 moves in 16 years loved him back.

 

Beaufort historian Lawrence S. Rowland said Conroy put Beaufort on a national stage through books like “Prince of Tides” and “The Great Santini.” And those novels brought Hollywood to town, and the stars would return for other blockbusters like “Forrest Gump” and “The Big Chill.”


Source & More: Beaufort Gazette


http://tinyurl.com/hsoha67


Pat Conroy, best-selling author of ‘Great Santini’ and ‘Prince of Tides,’ dies at 70


“One of the greatest gifts you can get as a writer,” Pat Conroy once said, “is to be born into an unhappy family.” By that measure alone, Mr. Conroy had ample training. In one best-selling novel after another, he drew on bitter memories, particularly of his despotic and abusive father, a Marine Corps fighter pilot.


“I always thanked Dad for giving me such intense pain as a child,” Mr. Conroy told The Washington Post in 1992, “so I could write about it the rest of my life.”


His experiences formed the emotional core of such books as “The Great Santini,” “The Lords of Discipline,” “The Prince of Tides” and “Beach Music,” several of which were adapted into films.

 

Source & More: Washington Post


http://tinyurl.com/h2n6pfl

 

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Message 52 of 101
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Re: On author's deaths and the effect on their book prices ...

He was much loved in Beaufort, which became my second home town. Many notes of condolence on my FB feed this AM. 

Message 53 of 101
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Earl Hamner Jr., author of Spencer's Mountain and creator of "Waltons" TV show, dies at 92


Earl Hamner Jr., the versatile and prolific writer who drew upon his Depression-era upbringing in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia to create one of television's most beloved family shows, "The Waltons," has died.


Although best remembered for "The Waltons," which aired for nine seasons and won more than a dozen Emmys, that show barely scratched the surface of Hamner's literary accomplishments.


He was a best-selling novelist ("Spencer's Mountain"), the author of eight episodes of the classic 1960s TV show "The Twilight Zone" and, as a screenwriter, adapted the popular children's tale "Charlotte's Web," into a hit 2006 film. He also created the popular, long-running TV drama "Falcon Crest" and wrote for such other TV shows as "Wagon Train," ''Gentle Ben" and "The Wild Thornberrys."


[Ray] Castro said Hamner remained busy in recent years, and had recently sold a play. "He was a great Southern gentleman, a great friend, a great father," Castro said. "He was my mentor. America has truly lost a great icon."


Hamner published nearly a dozen books and wrote hundreds of TV scripts. He continued to write into his 90s, once noting proudly that the same month he turned 90 he had two stories published in separate collections.


One, "Come Down to the Store, Minerva," appeared in the horror anthology "Shadow Masters: An Anthology From the Horror Zone" and was inspired by an idea Hamner said he had stashed away decades before when he was writing for "The Twilight Zone." The other, on fishing, was published in "Gray's Sporting Journal."


Source & More:
http://www.chron.com/entertainment/television/article/Earl-Hamner-Jr-creator-of-Waltons-TV-show-7045...

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Jim Harrison, author of 'Legends of the Fall,' dies


Jim Harrison, the prolific author, poet and outdoorsman whose novella of the American frontier, "Legends of the Fall," became a hit movie starring Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins, has died. He was 78.


Harrison was a versatile writer who authored almost 40 books, including novels, collections of poems and eloquent essays about his passion for food. He was considered a master of the novella, a short novel or long short story, although he didn't find mainstream success until later in his career.


His rugged and deeply humane fiction often depicted complex men grappling with their place in the wilderness, including the forests of northern Michigan, where he grew up, and the wilds of Montana, his adopted home. Sometimes described as a contemporary Ernest Hemingway, Harrison devoured good meals as he did life. When he wasn't writing, he was hiking, hunting, fishing, cooking or, in his younger days, carousing with such notable drinking buddies as actor Jack Nicholson and novelist Thomas McGuane.


But he was also a disciplined writer who had already seen two of his books published in 2016 and who left a rough draft of a novella based on his "Brown Dog" character, Entrekin said. "You do manage a somewhat religious attitude toward your art. It is a calling rather than a job," Harrison told The New York Times in an interview published only a week ago. "I now find myself in an occasional state of surprise that I've made a living as a novelist for quite some time, the opposite of what I expected."


Harrison first wrote poetry, then tried his hand at a novel, at the suggestion of his pal McGuane while convalescing after tumbling off a cliff when he was bird hunting. He churned out novels and poems in semi-obscurity for almost two decades before Hollywood came calling.


"Revenge," Harrison's novella about a man who swears vengeance after being left for dead in the Mexican desert, was made into a 1990 movie starring Kevin Costner, Madeline Stowe and Anthony Quinn. Harrison co-wrote the screenplay. Then came 1994's "Legends of the Fall," about three brothers (Pitt, Henry Thomas and Aidan Quinn) romancing the same woman (Julia Ormond) in early 20th-century Montana. Although some critics found it melodramatic, it earned $160 million worldwide and helped make Pitt a global star.


Harrison also co-wrote the script for "Wolf," the 1994 movie starring Nicholson as an aging publisher whose career gets new life after he is bitten by a wolf. The film was loosely adapted from one of his novellas, but he clashed with director Mike Nichols and the experience soured him on Hollywood.


Although Harrison never wrote big best-sellers, his work was deeply admired in literary circles. Among his most beloved novels and novellas are "Dalva," "Julip," "The Woman Lit by Fireflies" and "True North." In more recent years, Harrison penned a memoir, "Off to the Side," and a collection of essays, "The Raw and the Cooked: Adventures of a Roving Gourmand."


Water
by Jim Harrison


Before I was born I was water.
I thought of this sitting on a blue
chair surrounded by pink, red, white
hollyhocks in the yard in front
of my green studio. There are conclusions
to be drawn but I can’t do it anymore.
Born man, child man, singing man,
dying man. This is a round river
and we are her fish who become water.

 


Source & More:

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/27/entertainment/author-jim-harrison-obit-legends-fall-feat/index.html

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Message 55 of 101
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Daniel Berrigan, Jesuit priest, antiwar activist, award-winning poet and prolific author, dead at 94:

 

The United States was tearing itself apart over civil rights and the war in Southeast Asia when Father Berrigan emerged in the 1960s as an intellectual star of the Roman Catholic “new left,” articulating a view that racism and poverty, militarism and capitalist greed were interconnected pieces of the same big problem: an unjust society.

 

Rest of the article:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/nyregion/daniel-j-berrigan-defiant-priest-who-preached-pacifism-di...

Message 56 of 101
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Re: On author's deaths and the effect on their book prices ...

The name Daniel Berrigan conjures instant memories for me of being in high school and my ultra-conservative Dad being so upset at paying private school tuition only to have the Catholic nuns "indoctrinate" us students on the Berrigan theology. 

Message 57 of 101
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Katherine Dunn, author of the weird and wonderful cult novel Geek Love:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/15/books/katherine-dunn-author-of-geek-love-dies-at-70.html

Message 58 of 101
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Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, has died.

Message 59 of 101
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The summer before my oldest son started college, Penn State mailed a copy of Elie Wiesel's Night to all incoming freshman for summer reading. From what I recall, it was not for a class, the students were just to read it.


Elie Wiesel was a witness to evil and a symbol of endurance


http://tinyurl.com/jrslt6h


During the summer of my junior year of college, I read Treblinka by Jean-Francois Steiner. Not a book that one reads and then forgets.

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