Buying Used Books On The Internet - bookfinder.com And Other Sources

[The Hersch]

A question here for someone who knows anything about buying used books. Ebay has lots of hardcover, 1973 editions of this book, with nearly insane ranges in price - it seems I can get a perfectly decent copy for $30 or so, or, I can get what looks like the same thing for $300 (or, I can get the leather-bound Easton Press autographed edition for about $500, but I think I'll take a pass on that one). Does anyone have experience buying books on Ebay? Do people put things up there, just hoping and praying that some sucker will come along and pay ten-times what something is worth? (I suspect you could walk into many a used bookstore an find a hardcover copy of this book for $5.)

Somehow I missed this when you posted it nearly a month ago. I do know a bit about buying used books. I would avoid buying books on Ebay unless you're willing to do research and learn what a given edition of a given book in given condition is bringing on the regular used-book market. It's possible to get a bargain on Ebay if you know what you're doing. The best source I know of for used book information is bookfinder.com, which is sort of an online clearing-house for the used book trade. It's more like an index than a marketplace. It has listings from thousands of independent booksellers, but also listings from online book marketplaces, such as abebooks, amazon, and alibris. If you plug into bookfinder.com's search page that you want this book, hardcover, used, published in 1973, you'll get several hundred hits, organized from least to most expensive, and almost all with a statement of condition. It appears that the first edition was from Delacorte Press, with the first U.K. edition coming out of Jonathan Cape Ltd. The least expensive copy with the attributes I listed above is $6.02, including shipping, in "acceptable" condition, with no dust jacket. The least expensive copy that appears to be in "collectible" condition, very good in good dust-jacket but price-clipped, is $16.98 including shipping, published by Delacorte. It is not a stated first edition, but could be one. If you just want a solid reading copy, there's a "very good" copy published by Jonathan Cape on offer for $6.26 including shipping. ("Very good", along with "good" and "fine" and other such descriptions are terms of art in the used book trade.) The most expensive copy is $1,755.00 including shipping, for a fine first edition first printing in fine dust jacket inscribed by the author to a friend (inscriptions are almost always more valuable than mere signatures). I assume you wouldn't be interested in that one, nor would I. You can click through to a copy you want to buy and order it online.

As I say, it's possible to get a bargain on Ebay if you know what you're doing. I gave up buying books in that venue quite a few years ago after some really unsatisfactory transactions. You will almost never get a real bargain in a used book-shop, as they're run by book dealers who do know what they're doing and know the value of their stock, but you won't get ripped off either. You can find bargains in junk/"antique" shops and charity shops, but it's an awful lot of effort.

[Tweaked]

Friends of the Cleveland Park Library held their annual booksale today. Mostly mass market stuff but hardcovers were $1 and softcover 50 cents. Picked up a hardcover David Mitchell and Margaret Atwood for a whopping $2.

It's my understanding that the Chevy Chase (DC) library has a decent sized "Friends of" bookstore area.

[Barbara]

My go-to for used or out-of-print books is Alibris. Prices are all over the map, but they always list the cheapest first. I've never been sorry or overpaid for anything.

[lovehockey]

You can also try Abebooks. 

[Seanchai]

As someone who spent the late 90s and early 2000s having a little storefront/Internet book business on the side (in fact, that's where my user name comes from), I can say The Hersch's advice is spot on.  As a dealer you were looking for that sweet spot of an undervalued book to buy, especially if you specialized.  Conversely, you wanted to be pricing the book enough to give you a profit margin but not so high that it will never sell.  In those early days of the Internet it was easy to poach things off eBay in my speciality area (books of and about Ireland), but much harder now.  One reason is the websites cited above are today much more widely known and the other is that places like Amazon have aggressively gotten rid of the middleman like the book dealer I used to be and gone into business themselves.