Satnrose's Bookselling Hints

Satnrose's Bookselling Hints
Wise advice and sage words of wisdom as collected by the ebay booksellers board from an esteemed member of the board, Satnrose. Here in no particular order are the things I try to keep in the forefront of my mind when selecting and selling.

accentuate the positive.

1.) High feedback
2.) Lots of good books for sale
3.) Easy-to-read Item Descriptions
4.) Non-threatening terms of service
5.) Guarantees
6.) Friendly

Answer stupid questions politely.

Your customers are often undereducated in book terminology and standards, and need to know exactly what you've got. Spell it out if you have to. Tell them why the book is a first edition. Give the measurements of an octavo. Don't assume that they know what you're talking about. Play to the lowest common denominator.

Most of your customers have never dealt with you before and have no idea of your character or professionalism. Give them the best you've got, and be patient with their ignorance and fear.

An unfortunate side-effect to this is that once they begin to trust eBay, it makes it easy for the charlatans to take advantage of them.

"An informed consumer is our best customer"
- Marcy Sims

An auction is usually a distress sale.

Only online auctions allow the seller to be the auctioneer. You control the terms of sale, the shipping, the price and the description. In any other auction, you are at the mercy of the house.

Don't get overwhelmed with bad books.

The #1 problem with most bookstores is that they become overloaded with stock that is overpriced and/or inferior. A false solution is to have a %-off sale, in which the leftovers become even more unsalable.

The difference between a bad book & a tough-to-sell book is that the latter just needs to find the right customer.

Take what you know is inferior and trade up at another bookstore, or donate it to an FOL, etc.

Life's too short to sell bad books.

"Bargains" are devaluing.

Every time a bargain is found, the overall price goes down. Every time a book is sold for too much, the price goes up.

If 10 copies of The Old Man and the Sea sell sequentially for $1000 and the 11th goes for $900, the value goes down.

At a certain level, the dealers must buy to protect their market. This is particularly true of people who deal in the major artworks of specific artists, but it also applies to book dealers too.

A Book Sale is a battlefield.....and like in any war, preparation is the key. The 4 BC's: be calm, be cool, be collected, be concentrated. Bring a coat to cover your books. Keep your stash in a safe place. Bring a sandwich or a candy bar to keep your energy up when you flag. Don't argue with the staff. Don't gloat. Grab the best and sort the rest. Don't be a pig.

Fine bindings are collectible.

Most books that are leather bound are valuable as decorative "furniture": meant to be seen and never read.

Some binding materials: vellum, morocco, calf, sheep, chevre, pigskin, suede, etc. But any kind of leather can be used, even human.

Many of the great bookbinders would print their names in small letters on the verso of the front free end paper: Zaehnsdorf, Riviere, etc. (sometimes the name will be on the binding itself, or elsewhere).

"Victorian publishers' bindings" are also quite sought after: these are clothbound books with elaborate gilt and/or colored pictorial covers (sometimes these are signed with initials in the design: "MA", Margaret Armstrong, is one such).

To say that a book is bound in "boards" means usually that the covers are made of cardboard covered with paper.

500 years ago bookbinders would often use wooden boards for the covers, sometimes covered in other material such as rolled pigskin and other leathers.

In the 20th century, the paper covering is sometimes patterned to look like cloth. This is a technique that has sometimes fooled even seasoned bibliographers. However, if you look at it under a magnifying glass, you should be able to see that it doesn't have the distinctive criss-cross pattern of cloth threads. Or, look at the corners and/or spine ends to see if the material is slightly rubbed off.

Never remove a bookplate ...unless there's a better one underneath.

For instance, if you have an old armorial bookplate under a plain unimportant one. Always research to determine who the owner was. I use ancestry.com, britannica.com, Who Was Who in America, the Dictionary of National Biography, the Cambridge Biographical Dictionary and the Webster's Biographical Dictionary. One out of 20 turn out to be somebody of some importance.

Don't remove the bookplate if it means ruining the one underneath, or spoiling the book itself.

I once found a signed Eisenhower bookplate under another signed Eisenhower bookplate. He had misspelled the recipient's name on the first one and simply slapped another over top of it.

90% of books sell on eBay for less that what they're worth.

99% of books will sell faster on eBay than on the used book buying search engines. 1% of books will sell on eBay for much more than they're worth. A fast nickel is worth a slow dime.

Dazzle 'em with your brilliance...

Bidders are more willing to trust you if they think you know what you're talking about....and it's very easy to fake....

It simply requires a little knowledge about how to do research on the Internet, and then how to paste it into your auction (pure plagiarism).

But avoid the appearance of plagiarism of other people's auctions and/or catalogue descriptions. Just a little rewriting will avoid any nasty emails or other accusations.

The info you want to provide is (of course) the proper identification of the edition points of the book, a link to informational sites, a biography of the author or subject or owner (i.e., provenance), a brief explanation of the events involved, etc. Of course, post pictures and hyperlinks to pictures as much as you can.

The best point from which to start is britannica.com

Ask not what you can do for the book business; ask what the book business can do for you.

It continues your education.
It makes money.
It gives you something interesting to do.
It's a useful vocation.
It gives you a chance to be brilliant once in a while.

Most people who buy collectible books don't ever read them.

Why buy books at all when you've got access to a good library?

People buy books for one of 5 reasons:
1.) To read
2.) To study
3.) To collect
4.) To decorate
5.) To recycle

Buy low, sell high. Buy high, sell higher.

Buy low, sell high. The used book business is in a constant state of change.

If you can't adapt, you're out....

Children's clothing consignment stores can be a surprisingly good source for used children's books.

A clamshell box will make a book more valuable...but usually, the cost of having one made for the book isn't worth the extra value that it adds to the book. But for some books, the extra protection is well worth the price, regardless.

One more thing: if the book is wrapped in a special covering before it is placed in the box, said covering is called a chemise.

A book doesn't have to be collectible to be valuable.

Make the competition underestimate you....

....and they're all your competition...but if they overestimate you, make them buy junk.....

Condition is more expensive in modern first editions.

With most collectible books, the difference in value between a Very Good copy and a Fine copy is 1 to 2 or even 1 to 4; but with modern first editions (and especially the "hypermoderns") that difference can be 1 to 10 or even in some rare cases 1 to 100. In fact, with certain hypermoderns, a less than Fine copy is almost not worth bothering with.

A book in truly mint condition is worth a premium price.

Sometimes, the difference between "very good" and "mint" can be a hundredfold.

The difference between "fine" and "mint" really does exist: A book in "fine" condition is without flaws. A book in "mint" condition is virtually untouched.

Find something good to say about a book in "Poor" condition:

complete
intact
all plates present
covers still attached
sturdy
solid
rebindable
repairable
still interesting
suitable for breaking
very rare in any condition

In most cases, it is not cost effective to rebind or recase a book.

It's no crime to be wrong.

It is, however, a crime to misrepresent something when you know that it's wrong. And it's a misdemeanor when you should have known better, but still a crime...

The customer is always wronged.

....there's no use arguing.....

Buy Dada.

Just about anything Dadaesque is worth $$$. Other good "schools of art" genres: Futurism (mostly Italian), Expressionism (mostly German), Constructivism (mostly Russian), Surrealism, Bauhaus (mostly German)

The copyright date is not always the publication date.

The date on the title page is not always the publication date.
The publication date is not always the publication date.

Dealing in used books is gambling.

....but you almost always win the bet.....

Rarity is not enough.

Age is not enough.
Condition is not enough.
Original published price is not enough.
Desirability is everything....

Desirability isn't everything, it's the only thing....

Some valuable 1st ed books that aren't rare:

THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA
GONE WITH THE WIND
THE GRAPES OF WRATH
LEE'S LIEUTENANTS
THE CAT IN THE HAT
THE LITTLE PRINCE
THE CATCHER IN THE RYE

Some valuable 1st ed books that are quite rare:

HARRY POTTER AND THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
A RIVER RUNS THROUGH IT
THE WASTE LAND
FOUR QUARTETS
RAISE HIGH THE ROOFBEAMS CARPENTERS [1st issue only]

Any very old book in a dust jacket is worth a careful look.

.....I generally buy any 19th century book in a dj.....

Sometimes you can save the dj but not the book...

I.e., you can buy a book for the dj and "marry" it to an equivalent (in condition) copy of the first edition. This doesn't always work. sometimes the later printings are a different size, like THE CATCHER IN THE RYE or TALES OF THE SOUTH PACIFIC. There are many collectors who object to these shotgun weddings, and with good reason: often the later printing djs are not exactly the same as the 1sts.

Sometimes ex-library copies have been unmarked: the labels, etc., were affixed to the mylar covers instead of the dj itself, and the mylar was glued to the book, not the dj.

The legality of this maneuver is a little murky, so be sure to tell the buyer what you have done... One bookseller mentioned to me that even when you disclose to your seller the "marriage" it may not be disclosed to the next buyer.

Doubling your money on inferior items is a waste of time.

If you buy a book for $100 and you sell it for $200, that's ok. But if you buy 50 books for $2 each and you sell them one at a time for $4 each, it ends up costing you money in the long run. [The exception to this rule is if you expend little or no effort to do so, such as placing them on the shelves of your retail outlet.]

But if that's all you've got to work with, and your time isn't so very valuable, then that's the way it is.