Last night I received a phone call from one of my wife's many brothers. He wanted to talk to me about selling books online. Seems he and his wife are looking to supplement their income and a friend told them about selling books online. So we spoke for about 20-30 minutes about the online book trade. I tried my best to make it sound like a rather daunting task. Finally, I told him that if he wanted to pursue it further to send me an email and I would reply with some links and resources to get him started. We'll see how serious they are.
After hanging up the phone and climbing onto the Nordic Trak for my nightly punishment, I began to think about what I was agreeing to. Was I contributing to the already flooded arena of online book selling, further eroding the distinction between genuine book dealers and pseudo book sellers? The more I thought about it, and the more sweat I produced, I began to realize just how diverse the used and antiquarian book trade had become over that past decade or two. While the internet has spawned an entirely new breed of wannabe dealers, it has also brought more truly aspiring dealers in to the fold.
Over the next several posts on this bookseller's blog I intend to outline what I see as the growing classification of used and antiquarian book dealers. I will also provide a number of resources that I have found beneficial in my own struggle to educate myself in the trade and to becoming legitimate, or at least legitimate in my opinion.
(P.S. Just as I was about to post this, I received an email from my brother-in-law seeking more information...to be continued)Current Mood:  thoughtful |
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The following article appeared recently in the Seattle Times about booksellers having increasing technical problems selling on Amazon, which some feel has translated into steep declines in sales through Amazon channels. |
With tens of millions of books from thousands of dealers available for sale on the internet, book buyers and sellers alike need a good search tool to locate, purchase and/or price sought after titles. While there are many sites with inventory search engines allowing you to search their own inventory of new and used books, the true bibliophile needs a service that searches multiple inventories at once. Two sites provide this service well and offer the greatest assortment of features for the collector and seller: BookFinder.com and AddAll.com. Many book search services have come and gone, but these two have weathered the dot com storm. Both have received major overhauls over the years, and more improvements are likely.
As both a seller and a collector, I have been using both services for several years. Recently I conducted my own little informal comparison of the two sites and decided to begin using one of them exclusively. What follows is a summary of my findings and my choice for best book search site. Though this is not a scientific study, I have been in the used book trade since 1999, and have been a collector for much longer.
The first major difference is apparent from the start. Both services let you look up both used and new copies of a title, but AddAll requires you to first choose which you wish to search for, new or used. So if you wanted to look for a new copy of a particular title and weren’t satisfied with the results, AddAll requires you to begin your search all over in order to search for a used copy. BookFinder has integrated the new and used searches so that you only need to enter the information once. You are then able to review the results of both new and used copies side by side. This feature not only saves valuable time, but the information presented in such a format is far superior to AddAll’s approach.
While both services allow you to conduct an initial search using only a book’s ISBN, BookFinder rightly suggests that you not conduct your search in this manner. You are likely to get divergent search results from an ISBN only search versus an Author-Title search. One problem with an ISBN only search is that often booksellers will mask an older edition of a book that doesn’t have an ISBN on it with an ISBN from a more recent reprint. Too often the seller does not disclose that they are doing this. The end result might be that the buyer ends up with a second edition of a technical book when they were seeking the eleventh edition. Search by author and title for the best search results, no matter which service you use.
Each service gathers results from a multitude of book sites, but BookFinder out preforms AddAll in the number of sites referenced, as well as how selections are presented in the search results. AddAll lumps any possible match into their results list leaving you to sort through hundreds of listings. BookFinder groups potential lists together with subheadings, allowing you to further narrow your search for the best search results. Both sites allow you to view book prices in a number of different currencies, but BookFinder also allows you to conduct specialized foreign languages searches in French, German or Italian. (AddAll does have a Chinese user interface on their new book search site, but the search result only show up in English) Another nice feature in BookFinder’s search results is that the books are automatically listed from least expensive to most expensive. With AddAll, this can be accomplished, but an additional step is required.
One feature that is a plus for bibliophiles is the Weblog available on BookFinder’s site. There are gads of book trade related pieces that appear there, each relevant and timely for the bookseller and some for the collector. And finally, while both sites stated that they are run by book lovers, the staff at BookFinder proves it in two ways. First, they are devoted to books, and they do books better than anyone. AddAll has branched out into magazines, music and movies, losing their focus. Second, if you need any proof that these guys read, just check out the list of recently read books by Anirvan Chatterjee, the founder of BookFinder.
As a result of my little informal survey of these two sites, I award my “Best Book Search Site” Award to BookFinder.com. Keep up the good work. |
I can't pass up any book about books. Whether it has to do with collecting, selling, caring for, or what have you, I just can't pass it by. So when I learned of a new title on the market this year entitled Collecting Books by Matthew Budman, I had to get a copy and check it out. Published by House of Collectibles as a part of their Instant Expert Series, the trade paperback edition retails at $12.95. For better deals check BookFinder.com.
Budman is an avid reader and collector with over 12,000 books in his private collection. He is not a book dealer, but it is obvious that he has accumulated a vast reservoir of knowledge of the book trade from his many years of collecting. Collecting Books is one of the best introductory texts in the area of book collecting that I have come across. It is well researched, and logically presented. The section on the internet is only a little dated. But then again, at the speed that the internet is developing, any book addressing the internet is dated from the moment it goes into print.
Budman takes the novice through the important first steps of why to collect, and what to collect leaving little to the imagination. The average collector has changed over the past few decades and Budman's presentation is geared toward the bibliophile turned collector. His advice is practical and encouraging to the beginner. Included are chapters on market trends, strategies for buying, strategies for selling, condition guidelines, caring for books, a resource guide, and a glossary of collecting related terms.
While Collecting Books should be viewed as an introductory text, it does an excellent job of gearing up the wannabe collector for their next foray into the bookstall or cybershop. It would even benefit the bookseller who has been contemplating the jump from brick-n-mortar to cyberseller. |
Welcome to my blog on bookselling. Thanks to Anirvan Chatterjee, the founder of BookFinder.com for the idea. In a recent post in BookFinder's weblog there was a solicitation for booksellers with blogs. After conducting my own search, I could find few. As a relative neophyte to the used book world myself, I am always eager for new information and resources related to the used book trade. In my 5 short years in the book trade I have amassed an assortment of tricks and tips, hits and misses that I don't mind sharing. My hope is that other dealers will add to my information with their own adventures and/or misadventures in the book trade, either here or by starting their own blog on bookselling.
So enough about the what and why. Here is a blurb on the who.
I'm a bibliophile. Books are my passion. I own two small bookstores, about 50,000 titles. I left a career as a social worker to open my first store 5 years ago, and I've never looked back. I'm a book bandit. (Actually, Bandit is my k-9 companion) My two bookstores are thebookbandit.com and encorebookstore.com. There are all sorts of book dealers in cyberspace today. I consider myself a blend of the old and the new school of used book dealers. I operate both a brick-n-mortar shop and internet bookstores. My inventory is primarily general stock. I try not to specialize too much. I enjoy being around books so much that I don't want turn any away, unless absolutely necessary.
I live and breathe books; the touch, the smell, the feel of them, but primarily the ideas contained within them. Where would we be without books. I love hanging out in my shop everyday. What's even better is when I get to help someone connect with a book they have been searching for. If I don't have it in my inventory, I don't mind searching high and low to find a copy for them.
Other pieces of me:
husband
father of daughters
dog owner
former cloistered monk
spiritually searching
southern fried yankee
wannabe writer
wannabe vegetarian
wannabe environmentally friendlier
lover of fine films, especially merchant & ivory films
sporadic jogger
and of course, avid reader
and many other yet to be discovered quirks |
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