{"id":299484,"date":"2026-10-04T06:16:06","date_gmt":"2026-10-04T06:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/299484\/"},"modified":"2026-10-04T06:16:06","modified_gmt":"2026-10-04T06:16:06","slug":"meet-the-new-jersey-man-championing-rare-books-in-the-age-of-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/299484\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the New Jersey Man Championing Rare Books in the Age of AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Books have often been big news. Famed author Ray Bradbury, who once offered a keynote at Trenton State College (now the College of New Jersey), wrote about a futuristic nation burning its books in his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451. Book banning\u2014getting a spotlight in October\u2019s Banned Books Week, sponsored by the American Library Association\u2014remains a political hot potato.<\/p>\n

Now add AI book scanning\u2014and a legally required death by guillotine\u2014to the vanishing shelf life of these cultural icons.<\/p>\n

So when Wenonah\u2019s Tom Congalton\u2014who filled a 15,000-square-foot brick former grammar school with the world\u2019s rarest books to create his business, Between the Covers Rare Books in Gloucester Heights\u2014was acknowledged with wife Heidi in John Grisham\u2019s credits of his 2017 rare-manuscript-themed Camino Island as the pre-eminent dealers he consulted, it was appropriate. It\u2019s also worth noting Congalton\u2019s take on the industry\u2019s recently-revealed trend: Tech giants and artificial intelligence developers are buying (and by law destroying) books in bulk to train large language models (LLMs).<\/p>\n

\u201cTo mis-paraphrase Mark Twain, the demise of the book has been greatly exaggerated.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Tom Congalton<\/p>\n

In July, a federal court finalized a massive class-action settlement involving AI developer Anthropic, allowing such companies to purchase books and digitally scan them as fair use under the long-standing first-sale doctrine, provided they then destroy\u2014industrially slicing their spines\u2014and recycle the physical copies. Though those with Congalton\u2019s inventory may be more protected, the news highlights a divide between the haves and have-nots in bookselling.<\/p>\n

\u201cI doubt any AI harvester\u2019s coming to guillotine my first edition of Ulysses ($85,000), or the first edition of The Hobbit that I sold last year for a quarter of a million dollars, or the signed Phillis Wheatley I sold for a similar sum,\u201d he says. \u201cTo mis-paraphrase Mark Twain, the demise of the book has been greatly exaggerated.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Antiquarian Booksellers\u2019 Association of America (ABAA), the national professional booksellers\u2019 trade organization, hasn\u2019t declared a position on AI and its reach, though it\u2019s expanded a pre-existing focus group that remains in fact-find mode. \u201cOne thing\u2019s certain,\u201d says Susan Benne, its executive director of 22 years, \u201cAI has exploded and is here to stay. There are good uses, but we all have concerns with relation to books.\u201d<\/p>\n

Never, she says, has a bookseller had the prerogative to ask a buyer, \u201cWhat are you going to do with the book? It\u2019s kind of rude. Typically, they\u2019ve been read, collected, gifted or donated, so why would anything bad happen to the book?\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the membership\u2019s business decisions are individual, and the ABAA cannot monitor what\u2019s being sold or to whom (and many large purchases go to \u201cshell\u201d or nondescript coded DBA\u2014\u201cDoing Business As\u201d\u2014entities rather than the Anthropics and Amazons). Her sense, too, is that tech companies aren\u2019t buying rare books, but rather used or out-of-print books. AI\u2019s interest\u2014the words\u2014are the same in any edition.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaybe there are 20 million copies of The Catcher in the Rye out there,\u201d Congalton explains. \u201cWith fine first editions going for $20,000 and up, it would seem a poor choice to guillotine and scan a $20K copy rather than a $4 paperback.\u201d<\/p>\n

With some 250,000-plus books cataloged and for sale online<\/a>, the Congaltons specialize in rare literature, Americana, African American literature and history, plays and drama, women\u2019s history, art and photography, and more. Privately, they collect books, art, broadsides, documents and maps related to Cape May; they also own a house at Cape May Point. Heidi maintains a large collection of wine books.<\/p>\n

\"Between<\/p>\n

Tom CongaltonGene Smirnov<\/p>\n

Tom began collecting old and initially \u201cnot-always-so rare\u201d books in 1968. He was 16 and inspired by rare booksellers\u2019 memoirs more so than by common books he shelved at the Monmouth County Library in Freehold, where he once \u201cfeigned work.\u201d Perhaps he was best schooled by other \u201cequally unsuited\u201d careers, such as cooking in restaurants and operating a woodworking shop. \u201cThere\u2019s usually some curious and circuitous path from having a \u2018real job\u2019 to becoming a bookseller,\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n

A decade into splitting time, he began building his reputation and business. He met Heidi in 1984 in his native Colts Neck. She encouraged him to close his cabinet shop to sell books full-time.<\/p>\n

Between the Covers began in their apartment in Old Bridge. Then the couple moved to Collingswood and began issuing distinctive catalogs, with nationally regarded cartoonist Tom Bloom illustrating some 150 covers since 1989, the year Heidi joined the business full-time. She established their first formal offices in Haddonfield, then in a Victorian in Merchantville. She was also cofounder of the New Jersey Antiquarian Book Fair, once the longest running such event in the Garden State. Tom, a lifelong New Jerseyan\u2014he graduated from Christian Brothers Academy in Lincroft and Monmouth College (now University)\u2014was a founding member of the Antiquarian Booksellers of New Jersey (ABNJ).<\/p>\n

Now 74, he joined the ABAA in 1990, eventually serving as president (2000-2002), and later was president of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB).<\/p>\n

Benne, who often hikes in New Jersey, has known Congalton for years. \u201cPeople who work for him have worked for him for decades,\u201d she says. \u201cHe\u2019s diplomatic, erudite, generous and knowledgeable.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also given back, serving on the committee for the New York Antiquarian Book Fair, the nation\u2019s oldest, for over 20 years. From 2000 to 2010, he lectured at the Colorado (College) Antiquarian Book Seminar and served on the foundation board that oversees the heralded program for beginning and mid-level book professionals. Southern rare bookseller Cliff Graubart calls Tom \u201ca beacon for young dealers.\u201d For over a decade, he also taught at the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia, the foremost program for rare-book pros. No matter the trends, he remains a protector and preserver of the \u201ccultural and social cachet\u201d that buying, selling and collecting books represents.<\/p>\n

Visiting Between the Covers is by appointment only, but be advised: Such a rendezvous might strike suspicion. Once, at a book fair, Tom was introduced to a famous actress. Over two days, she left with parcels totaling $20,000 or more. Months later, her accountant called, needing clarification on his invoice. Timidly, she asked, \u201cWhat kind of business is Between the Covers?\u201d He said, \u201cWe sell old books.\u201d \u201cOh, thank God!\u201d she replied.<\/p>\n

\u201cI guess she feared Between the Covers was something else entirely,\u201d Congalton concludes.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Books have often been big news. Famed author Ray Bradbury, who once offered a keynote at Trenton State…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":299485,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[8090,69,71,70],"class_list":["post-299484","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-philadelphia","tag-books","tag-philadelphia","tag-philadelphia-headlines","tag-philadelphia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299484","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=299484"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/299484\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/299485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=299484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=299484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=299484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}