More Year End Lists than you can shake a stick at!

Aieeee, the mother lode!

I can vouch for the authenticity of this one.

I mean, there are a lot of other OP books that are hot but this is a good list.
I'm thinking this list is compiled from 'books sold', not all searches...most of these titles are out there, they're just expensive. We sold a copy of the John Kerry one we picked up at a yard sale for $2 for several hundred dollars.

And the Koontz book didn't exist for many, many years....it was something referenced in many of his books like the Lovecraft used The Necronomicon or the less famous Robert W. Chambers used The King in Yellow.

Ever the opportunist, Koontz collected all of the excerpts from the purported dark tome and compiled them between a single cover. It's nice I don't have to argue with fans of his about whether or not the book exists, but it's lame because it's not what they're looking for, it's just a collection of bits and pieces they already own.

And a note on the Madonna Sex book: if you have it sealed in the bag, it's worth much more than an open copy. Intact copies are fairly scarce because the covers were machined aluminum and they used a shitty clamshell wire binding, kinda like a spiral bound notebook but worse. Even if you leaf through a copy carefully, it's liable to come apart.

Why anyone would make a $100 limited edition book with a ten cent binding like that is confusing. But it's good for used book dealers, because even though a million or so copies were printed (some 'limited edition') most of them were demolished by incautious readers. A decent copy minus the bag and CD goes for $50 or so, you can sell a whole copy that's been opened for $125 pretty quick.

I haven't seen a sealed copy in a few years, I'd estimate you could turn it over fast for $300, and maybe get as much as $500 if you were willing to wait a bit. I'll definitely do some reasearch next time I have to price a sealed one.

It pains me that I worked at Waldenbooks when this one came out, and we wrangled a huge number of copies and there was an orgy of employee discount buying. I didn't pick any up because I figured a million copy 'limited edition' was comical and I didn't know enough about the used market yet to cotton on to the shitty binding.

Oh well....live and learn!