I’ve looked on Abe, AddAll, Bookfinder, Amazon and I find no price reference anywhere. Google will tell me that the book sits in a few collections but this information does not help me set a price. What do I do?
If you are selling books online this scenario will present itself fairly regularly. If it doesn’t I might suggest that you are not buying books that will help you stay in the game long term.
As you may have guessed, a book that is this hard to find usually means one of two things. 1. It is so rare that it never comes up for sale so it must be a true gem $$$.
2. It is so utterly useless that only a handful were ever made and the author’s Mom has most copies up in the attic.
As always the amount of gray area in between is vast and your book’s price will no doubt be found there. OK, enough with what you already know - how about some tips?
One of the first things that a new book seller assumes is that if it’s old it must be worth a lot. This is often incorrect especially for fiction. Keep in mind at the turn of the century there was no television, no tabloids, no cheesy movies. Folks got a lot of their less weighty drama in the form of novels. That being said, a good place to start is a quick lookup of the author. Is he well respected or has he written other works of notoriety? If he happens to have two other books selling online for a pretty penny and you have an earlier work then you may have something. You can look up the author and perhaps a year of publication range at Abebooks or do a simple search on the author at Wikipedia (a great place for background info). You should also take note of the publisher. After a while certain names will reappear. Some will tell you that a particular book was mass produced and is not too valuable while others will lead to more questions.
A few other tips to remember. There are a few online booksellers that consistently overprice books (I mean way over price). You will get to know their names fast enough. If you see one of them price a book at $150.00 please do not price yours at $145.00. Do your own research, perhaps simply say to yourself, “What would I pay for this?” If you feel that it’s a $40.00 book then mark it at $40.00 or even $20.00 if you need a quick sale or if you picked it up for $1.00. This train of thought though should not apply to works of historical value of those in demand by collectors. But how do you know if it’s collectible or not? One of the most important skills you will need to develop is instinct. What does it seem like to you? If you are really stuck there is nothing wrong with putting it on the back burner for a while. You may start one shelf in your back room with ‘books of uncertain value’ and just re-research them every once in a while. One tool I like to use while my books are sitting around is a custom search on eBay. You can create and save searches and also have eBay send you an email when an item comes up in the search results. Set up a search for each book on your backroom shelf.
Sometimes finances comes into play. If your bills aren’t piling up on you then perhaps you could give it a healthy price and wait. Jungle Books mentioned at The Bookshop Blog Forum that he likes to put a starting price of $200. That’s fair enough as you can always lower the price after a few months if it doesn’t move.
There may be times when you come across a book that you think has some serious value. In this case it may be wise to bring it to a more experienced dealer in your area for an appraisal. Hopefully he will treat you as a colleague and give you his honest opinion. If you go this route make sure to thank him not in words but pick up a book for yourself. He’ll look forward to your next visit. If there are no such gentlemen in your area then you might want to try Joe Orlando’s email list (for B & M owners), or if you only sell books online then you’ll want to start a conversation at one or two of your favorite booksellers forums.
Recap:
Do some investigative work using some of the resources listed below.
Keep a Go-To list for future research.
Trust your own instincts.
Put it on the back burner or backroom shelf for a while if you really can’t decide or if you think there is a possibility that it may have some serious value.
Ask another dealer.
Ask others on your favorite forums.
Resources:
Abe Wants List (under your booksellers menu - for Abe Sellers only)
eBay Completed Items
Americana Exchange
Wikipedia - for Author’s Bio
Joe’s Bookstore Group
Bookshop Blog booksellers forum
Faded Giant