Online Resources for Antiquarian Fish Books

There are many great current fishing books and fish guide books on the market to read, and they can be found at any number of brick and mortar bookstores. But if you are looking for an out of print fish reference book or an old fishing guide book, it can be hard to find. Older and historical fishing cookbooks are great to collect and many have recipes that are unique to particular geographical areas.

Here are some great online retailers that can help with the hunt for an older favorite fishing read.

ABAA: Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America
www.abaa.org
This is an organization for booksellers, and a place to find rare books. You can search by title, date of printing or keyword search such as 'fish', ichthyology' and fishing. Individual sellers that have online catalogs with many titles in one section are listed, and the WANT section is an area where you can list an item's name and other details and the system will check any new titles for any matches of the information entered.

ILAB: The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers
www.ilab.org
Another great resource for older fishing books, they also have a WANT section if you cannot find something specific you are looking for. This site has an online catalog for sellers collections of books on a similar topics (scroll down to find a topic you are interested in) and it has an advanced search section. If you are just starting in book collecting, they have a great dictionary of words common to bookselling in four different languages (for example BOOK reads 'book' in English, 'buch' in Deutsch, 'boek' in the Nederlands, and 'livre' in French).

ABE Books
www.abe.com
This site remains a very popular place for people looking for out of print books in just about any topic. In their Antiquarian & Rare Books section, a search for 'ichthyology', 'fishing' or 'fish' yields many great reads in all price ranges and areas of expertise. In the advanced search, you can look for a particular binding, or attributes such as first edition, dust jacket or signed.

Alibris
www.alibris.com
Alibris has many used and out of print books to sift through. They have a Rare and Collectible section where you can advamced search for bindings, year of print or publisher, or even by a specific ISBN number if you have it. Their Book Fetch is where you enter in specifics about a book you are wanting, and they will email you with information on the seller if one becomes available.

Amazon.com
www.amazon.com
This large online book retailer is known for having the latest in the book world. But they have individual sellers selling their collections as well. If you know the title or ISBN number of a book, enter it in the search areas and it will let you know if any one has that book to sell. If so, listings will show who is selling it, what their ratings are from other buyers, and in what condition the book is in.

Ebay
www.ebay.com
While this remains the site to find treasures and treasured junk, it is also a great resource for finding older books. Ebay on any given day has sellers unloading their old fishing book collections, and people who have purchased old library copies that they are giving away. Searching for the terms 'ichthyology', 'fishing', 'fish' or even a specific species of fish will give you many different results.