Seven Good Reasons to NOT sell your old textbooks on Bookscouter

So I received an interesting email the other day from the good folks over at Onlinedegreeprograms.com suggesting their recent post "7 Good Reasons to keep your Old Textbooks."  While I talk quite a bit on this blog about techniques for selling old books in general and textbooks in particular, this is a bit of cover for the fact that I keep a vast quantity of books for myself, including a large number of textbooks in my chosen field of Anthropology.

Looking through ODP.com's reasons, I find a few of them resonate.  In particular the importance of old books for reference; in anthropology we rely upon extensive texts called "ethnographies" over articles and for much of what I do, a book is a necessary and good thing.  My medical doctor friend says the same about his anatomy books.  I also lend many of my books to colleagues (always put your name in them!), one of ODP's other ideas.

Their idea of visuals is a neat one: obsolete books could be scavenged for their images for collages, wrapping paper, etc.  The use of books for decoration I find amusing, though I do have a few nice leather books in my living room, most of my useful textbooks are far too beat up to be decorative.

This leaves two of their uses: donation to homeschoolers and to charity.  I've actually found that obsolete textbooks are not appreciated at most charities, in particular library book sales that look askance upon such things.  The relevance of most college-level texts to homeschoolers seems a bit of a stretch, you'd have to find just the right student I suppose.  Moreover, if a book is still relevant enough for a homeschooler, it's still probably relevant enough for me!

I find that obsolete textbooks, if they're not cut up for pretty pictures are, unfortunately, often only bound for the recycling, but I do appreciate ODP's enthusiasm.

Parts of a Book Part III: How Books are Made (Sewn vs. Glued Bindings)

In this third and final installment of "Parts of a Book," we will be exploring the process by which a book is physically constructed; in previous sections we examined the outside of the book and the inside of the book.

This information is important to a bookseller because when we understand the mechanics of a book, we are better able to judge whether it was:

(a) well made and 

(b) has stood the test of time.

Books begin their lives as groupings of consecutive pages called signatures, which have been printed, trimmed and folded.  Signatures are organized in order, have the covers added and then are bound.  There are several types of binding: sewing (the most traditional) using thread, stapling, and perfect binding (using glues).

To tell whether your book has a sewn binding--a generally desirable trait as it makes the book more valuable--open the book, turn it on its side and look at the headband (guide to parts of a book).  According to Leonard's Books you:

can (sometimes, or often, or usually) tell if the pages appear to be side-by-side in neat little folded groupings like tiny booklets. These booklets are called signatures. This is usually a clue that the binding is sewn.

But not always!

Now, if you can get to the center of one of the little signatures, look for sewing or stitching running down the length of the spine edges of the pages — in the gutter, in the center of the folded middle page. If you see threads, you have a sewn binding.

If your book is beginning to come apart, you can look in between the signatures and see the threads; note that a mesh-like cloth along the spine is not threads, but a material used in glued bindings.

Parts of a Book Part II: Inside

Previously, I featured a post that discussed the external parts of a book, today-as the next installment of our three part series-I wish to open the covers and explore the internal divisions of books.  The goal here is to provide you with the knowledge and, especially, vocabulary necessary to be able to evaluate, appropriately price and sell your books.

For this exploration of the interior architecture of books, I will start inside the front cover and work my way to the back.

Depending on the book, the first pages may in fact be blank.  These pages are called the gathers and are a product of the mechanical method in which books are created, which we will get to in our next segment.  Basically, there must be an equal number of pages in each subsection of the book when it is bound and if there are not, the machines put a few extra pages in the front to balance, hence the gathers.  Sometimes the gathers are at the end of the book, depending on the publisher.

Working in from the gathers, one next encounters the title page.  Here you'll find the full title of the work, the author, publisher and year.  This is an immensely important page for us as is the next page, the edition notice (or copyright page), which contains the ISBN number and the edition number (click for my posts on how to read ISBNs and how to identify first editions).  With these two pages, we have information on: the title, who wrote the book, when it was first published, what edition this copy is, who published it, where and what the ISBN is.

There are two minor variations on this theme: a "half title page" and a "frontispiece."  The half title contains nothing more than the main title (so no subtitles); the frontispiece is a decorative image which is on a page facing the title page, these are a bit old-fashioned and were often beautiful wood-cut prints.  A nice frontispiece can add value to a book.

When looking to see if a book has been signed by the author, check out the title page or the half title.

After these technical pages, we begin to come to more content-oriented pieces: the acknowledgement, the dedication, the table of contents, forwards, prefaces, introductions and prologues.  Of course, not all books have all of these things, unlike the title page and edition notice, which are standard for all commercially published books.  Together all of these elements, from the title page to the final prologue constitute the part of the book known as the Front Matter.

This is followed by the main body of the book, which is known as the Content Matter.  It is a bit ironic that while books are written for their content matter, it is often what is contained in the external condition of the book and in the information of the front matter that determines the value.  A terribly written text can become valuable simply because of who wrote it, when they wrote it or what condition it is in.  When evaluating books, however, I simply note what the contents are (if the book is well known or is in a subject that I believe sells well) and then move on.

Finally, we come to the last element of the interior of the book, the End Matter.  This includes epilogues, afterwords, glossaries, postscripts, appendices, the index and the bibliography.  This material influences price far less than either of the other two, in fact it can be missing altogether and still be a valuable book.  The only tiny footnote to this is that if you have a book that you believe may be valuable as an academic text, the absence of a good index and bibliography basically means that its value is limited to scholars, was put together shabbily or simply isn't a serious book.

This concludes our discussion of the interior geography of books, I hope it helps you not only to better evaluate the price of a book, but also to appreciate their craftsmanship.

Next Post: Part III- How Books are Made.

Parts of a Book Part 1: The Outside

A book dealer needs to understand not only the ways in which the contents of a book influences its price, but also how the role of a book's physical state affects its value.  We must be able to accurately judge and describe the books we sell and in order to do this we must have a familiarity with the lingo regarding the parts of the book and a basic understanding how books are put together.

This is a rather large topic, so I will divide it into three parts: this first one dedicated to the surface of the book--the covers and edges.  The second will focus on the internal divisions of a book and the final segment will detail how books are created.

Starting on the left-hand picture, the inside of the front cover, we see a single sheet of paper, the endsheet, often decorative and of heavier stock than the rest of the book.  One half of the endsheet is glued to the cover forming the pastedown, the other half is the flyleaf, which is intentionally left blank.  At this point, we can also see the book's edges.  The long edge that runs down the page is called the fore edge, and the bottom is called the tail and the top is called the head.  The edges are sometimes gilded or colored, a process where they are coated in a material like gold which serves not only to beautify the book but also to protect its pages.

Turning to the right-hand picture, we see the outside of the book.  This leatherbound book is traditional in its structure and not all books will have the same elements.  The most important parts here are the covers, which protect the front and back of the book, and the spine, which protects the book's bindings.  Connecting the covers to the spine is a narrow flexible area called the hinge (or the joint) which allows the cover to open.  At the top, where the binding meets the head, there is sometimes a protective piece of cloth called the headband.  Along the spine there are sometimes ridges called raised bands, which used to have a function in covering the cords that bound a book together but today are decorative.

As we examine a book for purchase or sale, we need to be fluent in these terms so that we can give a good description of the text.  In particular we need to see that the spine is straight and uncreased or warped, and that the edges are not worn.

Next Post: The internal parts of a book.

Identifying First Edition Used Books

When I started this business, one of the few things I "knew" was that first edition books were the most valuable.  So, I looked through piles of books around my house to find the first editions for sale... to my surprise I soon realized that it is sometimes a challenge to identify a first edition, much less sell it.

The art of identifying first editions is a relatively complicated one, in part due to variations between publishers.  Alibris publishes a full guide to the issue as does Bookseller World and you might consider picking up a copy of A Pocket Guide to the Identification of First Editions by Bill McBride, but here are some hints to get you started:

• Start by looking at the dust jacket or wherever the price is normally located.  If there isn't a price tag, chances are it's a Book Club Edition and is probably worthless.  The dust jacket may even be labeled "Book Club Edition"

• Go to the Copyright page.  Look for the words "First Edition" or "First Printing" or look for a string of numbers for instance these from my copy of Attila the Hun by John Man:

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

If the number "1" is the first in the sequence, it's a first edition.  If not, even if it says "First Edition 3 5 7....", then it's not a first edition.  Some publishers use letters instead and "A" replaces "1."  The one exception is Random House, which does write "First Edition 3 5 7...." for its first edition.  Confused yet? 

• When the numbers are missing, editions are labeled as such.  However, if the copyright says something like "First Penguin Edition 2009" and then below the title the word "2010," it is not the first edition.  Basically, if there are ANY dates later than the first edition date on the page, it's not a first.
• As the book rises in rarity, be more wary of fake dust jackets.  This issue is handled well on artbusiness.com, and I suggest you take a look there before buying a 1st edition Great Gatsby or Color Purple, but for the moment it pays to double check dust jacket information with the copyright page for rarer books.

Happy Hunting!

Romance Novels are Radioactive

Anyone who touches a toe into the pool of book dealing will encounter the great, cracked-spine, worn-cover hordes of romance novels (such as the famous Harlequin line).  Don't touch them.  Here are two illustrative examples of why not:

Example #1

A few years ago, I helped a friend out in a small used book store he ran in a college town.  Generally speaking I wasn't authorized to buy books, but we did have a "buy list" of stalwarts that we always purchased, with accompanying prices.  On this list were "romance novels about cowboys (must wear cowboy hat on cover)" for 25 cents.  There was a young woman who stopped by once a week to inquire about these books and was willing to pay a hefty $1 a piece, provided the cowboy had a cowboy hat on the cover.

Example #2

Much more recently, I was collecting a wide variety of books to prepare for a flea market stand that never materialized.  On Craigslist I found an offer for a romance novel collection, which had to be bought in total for what worked out to around 5 cents a book.  They became an albatross around my neck as the box came to live in my car, accompanying me to every used book store I visited.  My library wouldn't even accept them for free for their sale.  I eventually, months later, unloaded them for about 3 cents a book on Craigslist.

Reflections

Example 1--a standing buyer willing to pay x4 the price you paid--is just about the best you can hope for.  However, my friend still only made 75 cents a book and most weeks didn't find any romance novels with cowboy hats.  While the payback was worth a minimal, passive effort, it certainly wouldn't pay his bills in the long run and was more valuable as a laugh.  The second example is actually not a worst case scenario, the worst case would be unloading the books into a bonfire, but it is far more typical of dealing with these books.  I took a hit, not just in up-front costs but also in time, gasoline and pride as every book dealer in the city came to think "oh, there's the guy who thinks he can sell Harlequin novels."
Life Lesson: Romance novels are radioactive.

PS: For all those looking for a bit of beefcake (or a laugh), here's a video on The Making of a Romance Novel Cover.

How to Classify the Condition of your Books

In a previous post, I noted how to evaluate the condition of a book.  That post was designed to help you to determine whether a book was worth purchasing. In this post, I will go over how, as a seller, you can classify your books according to condition for buyers. While there is some variation in terms—and you should ALWAYS look over the condition codes for any website you use—there is general agreement amongst dealers as to the categories used and their general meaning.

These condition codes are: New, Like New, Very Good, Good, Acceptable, Poor. In general, the only categories that you should consider buying are the first three, anything below Very Good is not worthwhile.

List of conditions

New: These books are exactly in the condition that one would purchase it from the producer.

Like New: Also called “Fine,” these books show some of the wearing that is typical of books that have been stored for some time. Some defects may include shelf wear or very faint dents on the cover.

Very Good: These books are worn, but still in excellent condition. This is the minimum level that I will buy books in with very few exceptions. There should not be structural problems with the book's spine, and no tears to the dust jacket.

Good: This is an average used book. The spine may be creased or worn, the bindings may be loose, there can be highlighting, or a crooked (“cocked”) spine

Acceptable: Also called “Fair,” all of the content pages are present but may lack the title pages or the end pages.

Poor: Also called a “Reader.” This book is still readable but the dust jacket may be falling apart.

In all cases, defects should be noted including writing inside the cover (e.g. the previous owner's name), bookplates, stamps, etc. There are a couple of qualifying circumstances that deserve special notation:

Ex-Library: If your book is a former library book, that needs to be marked. Books that have been rebound with “library bindings” are usually not worth your time.

Book Club: Book club editions (which are marked as such usually on the inside of the dust jacket or on the title page) must be noted as such. They are also largely not worth your time.

Judging a Book's Value

Perhaps the most important skill for an aspiring book dealer the ability to evaluate the profitability of a book. This requires a bit of practice and it is inevitable that there will be some losses on your part when you're starting out—and that you may sink money into some books that you can't move. However, with practice and a bit of systemic thinking, these losses can be mostly eliminated.

The key idea is to be able to balance costs and profits: sometimes books “look” valuable to the untrained eye (as in “of course this big, heavy leather book is expensive... it's big and leather”) which actually have little to no profit margin. Moreover, this guide assumes that you're—at least at first—not willing to risk considerable amounts of cash in acquiring single expensive books, it's better to spread your risk out amongst a larger number of less expensive books.

In order to determine whether a book is worth your while, there is a simple calculation of profitability that I like to use:

Profit = Quality – Condition - Cost

The first step is to evaluate the Quality of a book. This is an intangible estimate of how much it is worth based off of its history, rarity and desireability. There are a few factors that come into play here.

• Age: Generally speaking, the newer the book the better the quality you will need to get a good price. I avoid books within the last 20 years unless they are pristine. Older books tend to have more value due to rarity alone.

• Content: What is the book about? Is it a subject that a large group of people still find interesting? Unless the book is well-known, avoid mass-produced novels, even hardcovers. It may be useful to specialize in an area: are you knowledgeable about gardening? Or history? Learn about authors, movements and ideas in a particular area and you can better sell them.
• Appearance: Is the book nicely put together? Are the images (if there are any) glossy and full color? Is the cover leather? A high quality book is worth more than a standard run. Generally speaking, avoid soft-covers unless their condition is “Like New” (see below), this is especially true for the small mass-market paperbacks.
• Notoriety: Is the book or the author/illustrator well known? Famous authors can often deman higher prices simply because people are looking for them..
• Edition: In general, earlier editions are better but don't assume a 1^st edition means a valuable book (more on 1^st editions in a future post). Avoid Book Club editions—they are usually identified by a note on the inside of the dustjacket.
• Signatures/Inscriptions: Like 1^st editions, signatures by the author (illustrator, etc) usually mean a valuable book—but only if anyone cares enough about the author to pay for their signature.

With these factors in mind, you have a rough estimate of what a typical buyer for you book would be willing to pay if you met up on the street and the book in your hand was in excellent condition. There are, however, mitigating circumstances, the first of which is the Condition of the book. This also has a few qualifying circumstances. Here you need to pick up the book and evaluate it physically:

1. Spine: Look at the book from the side—carefully take off the dust jacket if necessary—is the spine straight? Is it creased? Are the pages tightly bound?
2. Cover/Dust Jacket: The first question you need to ask is if the DJ is present at all—not all books have them but you can safely assume that any hardcover book printed after WWII had one with the exception of fancy leather-bound beauties (the kind with gilded edges). What condition is the DJ and the cover in? Is there shelf-wear (the incidental wearing at the edges that naturally comes from taking a book on and off a shelf)?
3. Pages: Open the book, are the pages white and crisp? Is there discoloration or water damage? If the pages are falling out or badly damaged, chances are the book isn't worth your time. Is there writing inside the book? This is a bad sign, with the exception of a previous owner's name on the inside cover, other writing drives down value.
4. Mold: Open the book to the middle and put your nose up close to the spine and smell. Do you smell mold?

Together, these elements of the condition combine to determine the condition category of the book: New, Like New, Very Good, Good and Acceptable. I will go over these more in a future post, but suffice to say that I avoid anything below Very Good unless there are some strong mitigating factors.

Finally, you need to think about costs—the mony that you have to lay out just to get the book to the customer.

1. Shipping: How much will it cost to ship? You need to figure out roughly how much a book weighing a pound feels and looks—if you can eyeball this, you can judge how much it will cost to mail it. Don't forget the 75 cents for delivery confirmation.
2. Purchasing: How much does the book cost to you?
3. Online Costs: This is a sneaky bit of the calculation. Any website you use to post your books on will cost you. Some, like Amazon, can swallow a considerable portion of the profit. I will detail these costs when I cover the various websites available.
4. Incidental Costs: Did you have to drive somewhere special to get the book? Does it require buying a peculiarly shaped box? These are important incidental costs.

This gives you a rough estimate of how much you must ask to simply break even on the book and does not include payment for your time.

These factors may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but with time you learn to judge. As a rough guide I begin my thinking like this:

Base Value of a hardcover

+$8

Published before WWII (1939)

+$1

Published before WWI (1914)

+$2

Beautiful appearance (e.g. full color, glossy images)

+$1

Softcover

-$2

Each condition category below New

-$1

Online Costs

-$3

Shipping Costs for a <1 pound book

-$3.5

This means that for a book published in the last few years with the condition “New” (Quality $8 - $0 Condition - $6.5 Costs), has a potential profit of $1.50 before the cost to purchase it. I would not spend more than 50 cents on a book like this. Now, this is meant to be a rough estimate and it is very possible that you will make more on this book, but this guide gives you a way of guessing the profitability of the book while on a purchasing expedition and limit your losses until you get a handle on how much your books are worth.

Obviously, your profit margins are quite slim for many of these books—I am very happy to make $5 on a book. Of course, there are always gems to find, books that surprise (and disappoint) you. I have bought a book I estimated was worth $12 and come home to find it auctioning for $40.

Given experience and a larger cushion of profit in the bank, you can begin to take more risks and turn over more valuable books. However, even with highly rare books the basic calculation (Profit = Quality – Condition – Cost) remains fixed.