Dean Koontz fans, take note: For sale on the Web (www.raresf.com) is one of the 26 lettered and signed copies, bound in "full dark blue Morocco (goat skin)," of Charnel House's hardcover edition of Dark Rivers of the Heart (Knopf, 1994). The condition is only "fine" but the price is right -- just $1200, plus $2 for shipping.
Because genre fans can tend to extreme exuberance, Koontz is one of the most collected authors in the world. Rare book dealers online and off do a brisk trade in Koontziana, and a lot of the discussion on the Usenet group dedicated to the author (alt.books. dean-koontz) concerns the buying and selling of obscure editions or copies of his work. Prices vary dramatically. A signed copy of the first edition of The Bad Place (Putnam, 1990) may fetch $40, but an unsigned copy of Koontz's Strike Deep (1974, published under the pen name Anthony North) g s for $750 at Ed Thomas's Book Carnival bookstore in Orange County, Calif., and a signed first edition of Whispers (Putnam, 1980) for $500.
Katherine Ramsland tells PW that while researching Dean Koontz: A Writer's Biography, she encountered Koontz admirers who "run around trying to get first editions and get those signed. Some are so fanatical that they go through other people's work that they believe is attributable to Dean." Their hunt for Koontz items can prove especially challenging (and the finding particularly rewarding) because so many of Koontz's earlier books are pseudonymous and/or out of print.
What these fans know, however -- and what the average Koontz reader, and many publishing folk, may not -- is that nearly every original Koontz title (indeed nearly every original title by any author perceived as collectible) released in hardcover by a major house is first published in one or more limited, hardcover editions by a specialty publishing house. (Specialty publishing houses also often issue the first American hardcover editions of books previously released in the U.S. only in paper. In 1989, for example, Dark Harvest brought out the first hardcover edition of The Key to Midnight, which initially saw print in 1979 as a Pocket paperback under the Leigh Nichols byname).
Koontz's specialty house of choice these days is Cemetery Dance Publications, run by Richard Chizmar, founder of Cemetery Dance, the most influential magazine in the field of dark fantasy. By phone from his Maryland office, Chizmar informs PW that his company has published editions of two of Koontz's books. "Dean asked us if we wanted to do Fear Nothing," he explains. "We said, `Yes,' and he said, `Here's the person at Bantam you need to talk to.' We made an offer through the subrights department." Cemetery Dance has also released an edition of Koontz's Strange Highways.
Chizmar sells most copies of these special editions via mail order ("After ten years of doing the magazine, we have quite a customer base"). For Fear Nothing, he did a deluxe limited edition (698 signed and slipcased copies at $150 each) and a deluxe lettered edition (52 signed and traycased copies at $300 each), both featuring original art by Phil Parks. The lettered edition has sold out. This month he is publishing 750 leather-bound copies of Seize the Night, signed by Koontz and Parks, who has created five color paintings and one b&w illustration for the edition.
Chizmar's editions are pleasing to the eye and hand and are crafted to endure. It's easy to see why they appeal to collectors, as well as to Koontz -- for whom Chizmar has high praise: "Working with Dean is as good as it gets for us. But I don't tell him that anymore because I know it embarrasses him."
