If you're here supporting my humble little Patreon, you're probably a fan of collectible books and small presses. I'm always curious how each collector first got started on their collecting journey.

For me, I was in high school when I discovered the Limited Editions of Swan Song and Carrion Comfort thanks to my family's free AOL trial. I have no idea where I first saw them, but I'm guessing I stumbled upon some collector's Geocities website with photos of their collection. (And remember that posting photos online wasn't as easy then as it is now, so I'm pretty sure it must have been some obsessive book collector!)

I had read paperbacks of both epic novels a year or two before, and at the time I had no idea the small press even existed, but I saw those two incredible covers and read that they were hardcover editions and knew I had to have them.

I have no idea where I bought my copies from, though, because this was pre-eBay... and pre-Amazon carrying out of print stuff... but somehow I bought both of them and my interest in collectible books was born.

Later that year, I was working at my local Waldenbooks when five copies of the unsigned edition of WIZARD & GLASS from Donald Grant showed up. My manager saved one for me because the other four were gone by the time I got home from school. It was the most beautiful book I had ever seen, and at that point I was hooked for good.

Fun aside: my very first Amazon order was placed on August 24, 1997. A new book called The Fuel of Tender Years by Joey Froehlich and Stephen King had shown up in the Waldenbooks computer database, but there was absolutely no information about it. Was this some surprise new collaboration no one had heard about!? Who was this Joey guy??

Well, there was no information in the Waldenbooks database, but there was a listing for the book on this new website Amazon.com that our bosses said was doomed because who would be dumb enough to order stuff off the World Wide Web. So, I created myself an account and placed an order... and discovered The Fuel of Tender Years was actually a little poetry chapbook that Stephen King had kindly written an introduction for, which made this my very first chapbook:

How did you learn about the small press? What was the first collectible book you saw and said, "Wow, I have to have that!"?