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Welcome to TomFolio.com, a website for buying
and selling used, rare and collectible books, ephemera, and periodicals.
This website is owned
and operated by A Book
CoOp, which is a cooperative legally incorporated in the state of Wisconsin. As
a cooperative, our site is jointly and equally owned by independent member
booksellers who list on it. Owner-membership is open to
all independent booksellers who purchase a share of cooperative stock.
A Book CoOp began in 1999 as a small discussion group of independent
booksellers. We wanted to develop a bookselling site that would not be
vulnerable to the kind of corporate interference that can dictate selling
terms or reap undue profit from our efforts. We wanted a Code of Ethics
that requires professional standards of our sellers. We wanted to be able to
guarantee the highest quality service to our customers, and to be able to
deal with our customers directly. We wanted a database that would, in
short, be bookseller and bookbuyer friendly.
A cooperative was our answer. We hired an attorney experienced in the laws
regarding cooperatives. We incorporated, and made our Charter Member stock
offer late in December of that year.
The name of our website is taken from an 18th Century literary reference:
"The Tatler".
TOM FOLIO
(from The Tatler, April 13, 1710, by Joseph Addison)
"Tom Folio is a broker in learning, employed to get together good
Editions, and stock the Libraries of great men. There is not a Sale of
books begins till Tom Folio is seen at the door. There is not an Auction
where his name is not heard, and that too in the very nick of time, in
the critical moment, before the decisive stroke of the hammer. There is
not a Subscription goes forward, in which Tom is not privy to the first
rough draft of the Proposals; nor a Catalogue printed, that doth not
come to him wet from the press. He is an universal Scholar, so far as
the Title-page of all Authors, knows the Manuscripts in which they were
discovered, the Editions through which they have passed, with the
praises or censures which they have received from the several members of
the learned world."
Footnote: The reference is to Thomas Rawlinson (1681-1725), a lawyer and
bibliophile whose accumulation of books at his residence in
Gray's Inn was said to have compelled him to sleep in a
passageway. When Rawlinson's collection was sold at auction, it
required sixteen sales over twelve years, each sale taking from two
to four weeks.
For more information about the shareholder
stock offer, please click here.
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