WHEN ANSEL ADAMS’S Sierra Nevada was published in 1938, it set the standard for what was once rather grandly dubbed the “photographic monograph.” ... What makes a first edition of Sierra Nevada desirable and epensive today – you'll need to cough up $8,000 or more to get your hands on one – is that only 500 were printed.

There’s nothing new in collecting photo books, as monographs are now colloquially known. But the market has enjoyed a quiet revolution over the past decade, spurred in part by a single-owner sale at Christie’s New York in April 2008 – which set benchmarks in excess of $100,000...

For the collector wishing to build an investment portfolio of what were once called coffee-table books, this means there is a burgeoning entry-level market. These days, you don't need to track down $29,000 rare editions of Helmut Newton or Irving Penn to have a meaningful collection....

There are monumental works of iconic imagery that simply don’t fare well with collectors. Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s wonderful Earth from the Air is a decided victim of its own success. With more than three million copies circulating the globe since 1999, even a pristine first edition won’t fetch much more than double its cover price....

The addition of a signature or other inscription on the title page also has the potential to increase a book’s value.... “The addition of a signature, however, may have little to do with price,” adds Berry [Michael Berry, former editor of Bookdealer magazine] “unless the photographer is a rare signer or if the signature predates 1960.” The ideal situation, he says is for the artist to be dead.