Case Study: That Printer of Udell's

This is about a type of book we don't often see, what you could call a Lazarus Book, largely because it was given up for dead after many decades and yet has sprung back to life with some suddenness, specifically 122 years after its first appearance, sort of like that desert succulent commonly called a Century Plant. (Perhaps it's not so commonly known that a 30- or 40-year re-blooming period is more common for the botanical.) The book was one that I'd seen hundreds of times before in my travels on eBay and sometimes elsewhere, and at first it gave me pause (as in pausing to decide whether to bid on it or not), but time after time it limped in at $5 or $10, if that, when the outcome was determined. What did catch my eye was its 1903 publication date (or somewhat later copyright), the attractive front panel Victorian pictorial and the word "Printer" in the title. What also caught my eye was the large number of copies still circulating. In bookselling, this is usually a negative, that is, the more copies there are the less money will come back to you. Still, with books first published 122 years ago, there seemed to be a possibility that it was once sought after for some reason and might still have at least some content value, if not much as shelf decoration.

In any case, I continued to quietly pass it by until last year, something inexplicable happened. Copies started to thin out, and outcomes soared, often to $100 or more, even $200 plus. At the time I assumed these few sales were anomalies, but they kept happening. Weeks stretched into months. Values remained strong. At some point, apparently, an enterprising seller, perhaps a bookseller, had spotted something of significant interest in it. A connection. What in our early days we called a flashpoint. And away she went.

The first few high-outcome listings I examined didn't explain this, but some subsequent searching delivered the telling result in the title heading. Most contained the name "Reagan," our 40th (and 41st) President of the United States. It wasn't long before I noticed that many of those high dollar outcomes had this keyword in the title. Why?

Some history: At age 11 Ronald Reagan's mother gave him a book to read that greatly influenced him, both early on and throughout his life. The reasons were several. First, Reagan found in protagonist Dick Falkner, a role model he could closely identify with. Reagan's mother Nelle was a devout Christian (specifically Disciples of Christ) who lived her life according to its teachings and strongly influenced her son's spirituality - and she was married to an alcoholic, just as Dick's father had been, with all its darker elements. After reading the book, he consented to be baptized. To be fair, Reagan's father Jack worked hard to support the family, yet seemed to move through his years with a kind of aimlessness - just like Dick Falkner's father, in whom he saw how a life without much purpose could change if a purpose was finally found. Reagan's youth wasn't quite as troubled as Dick's - Dick lost both parents in his teens, for one thing - but Reagan's was checkered. And, of course, for many years immersed in Hollywood culture. He wasn't a bad boy, that is, but had his moments.

Interestingly, Reagan published a letter in his 1984 memoirs in which he expressed his gratitude for Falkner, and the book, That Printer of Udell's, that left him "with an abiding belief in the triumph of good over evil" that he would always take heart in - and this book was mentioned after being asked what his favorite childhood books were, none of which resembled anything more than unusual than typical children's books. As an adult, Reagan never wore conventional church teachings on his sleeve but simply tried to keep the question "What would Jesus do?" in front of him and tried to act accordingly. This dovetailed with the Social Gospel Movement in the latter part of the 19th century, which gave this same emphasis - try to do what Jesus would have done rather than what the church told you to do.

That Printer of Udell's was a significant force in this movement and also edgy in its own way, given the somewhat irreverent approach Dick Falkner met with life. Isn't this the sort of thing a boy might be interested in reading? It was also popular in its own right, published and reprinted more than once, also after first being drafted and redrafted and published in much shorter form multiple times in a small church publication before surfacing in its first book form.

Once this stage was set, all it took was a 2024 movie with Dennis Quaid starring as Reagan and a few other heavyweight actors to give it some legs, and in it, tellingly, was a short scene involving That Printer of Udell's that set the book on fire. Critics were generally ho-hum about the movie, but readers sought it out in any case.

To be clear, at least some of the interest in it had to do with its inspirational content. This was the preacher Harold Bell Wright's first book, published by an all but unknown book supplier to libraries, schools, etc., The Book Supply Company, and yet its modestly issued first edition sold out in five days. Later reprints pushed this number into the tens of thousands, especially so after an A. L. Burt reprint hit the streets a few years later. Wright himself became one of the best selling writers of this period, his second book, The Shepherd of the Hills (1907), later a John Wayne film, sparked general interest in him much more significantly.

But enough history. Let's move on to bookselling.

If there is a takeaway from all this fuss over That Pinter of Udell's, it's that books behave in many different ways in the marketplace. A few obvious examples: Many books boom quickly and disappear, some boom just as quickly and fade more slowly over time, some start slowly and build and build over longer times as they become more appreciated and/or understood, a few evolve into never-ending classics that bloom into many reprintings, and so on. In our not-so-common case occasionally some boom, all but die forever, and suddenly spring back to life like a Century Plant.

What you'll need to know today: First, sales are cooling some, and outcomes are coming down. If you can buy low ($20 to $50), you'll likely still see some profit if condition has anything to say about it. Second, edition state matters but not as much as you might think. I've seen some 1911 A. L. Burt reprints climb well over $200. However, I have faith that true first editions will win out in the long run. These are some pertinent issue points:

Title page:

Copyright page:

An aside: The first date, "1902," likely refers to Wright's copyright, secured to prevent piracy, the "AND 1903" portion of the statement most probably refers to the date the book was assigned to the Library of Congress catalogue, after the book itself was released to the marketplace. There is evidence in a deep search that this occurred in April of 1903.

Features: Bound in dark-green cloth with a gilt top edge, gilt lettering to the spine panel, white lettering and four borders to the front panel, one bordering the title at the top, one bordering the author's name at the bottom, one surrounding the middle area, and, in the center of the middle area, a photo of Udell mounted inside a lozenge-shaped border. In later printings the photo, cropped to a rectangle, was positioned to left side in a rectangular border (no lozenge), and white lettering to the spine panel. The first edition includes a John Clitheroe Gilbert duotone frontis illustration (the same front panel photo) and eight additional half-tone illustrations by John Clitheroe Gilbert bound in. A glassine interleaf is tipped-in between the frontis and title page.

A number of variants exist, due to A. L. Burt's participation - board cloth color variants (light green, red, tan, etc.), many with later copyright dates, most, if not all, with fewer illustrations, and an A. L. Burt publisher's statement at the bottom of the title page replacing the The Book Supply Company

To repeat what I've often said, the purpose of doing these case studies isn't so much to tell you which "hot" books to look for as it is to show patterns of specifics that make some books more valuable than others. Values are often time sensitive, hot evolving to cold, etc., but if you'll look for patterns in books generally and attempt to apply the value-enhancing patterns to books in hand, things will help your bottom line.