A Bookseller's Guide to Using the Internet by Craig Stark #25, 30 August, 2004

Never before in the history of bookselling has there been a more accurate tool than the Internet for pricing inventory. Gone are the days when pricing was done on the basis of consulting dealer lists and catalogs, auction sales records, making physical visits to book fairs, stores, etc. - all haphazard methods at best. Today we are only a few keystrokes away from real-life, timely values - the prices books sell for this very day in every corner of the planet. No more guesswork, right?

Well, not quite - actually, not by a long shot. As information-rich and timely as the Internet is, there's a great deal of misinformation out there as well, not to mention dated or plainly obsolete information, and as booksellers we very much need to acquire the know-how first for finding out where the good information is and second for evaluating it accurately once we find it because sometimes - maybe more often than not - it's devilishly mixed up with if not altogether obscured by bad information.

Logically, the first step in pricing a book is to research comparables or comps, those books currently for sale or recently sold that are similar to your book in condition, edition state, and other value-appreciating/depreciating factors (presence or absence of dust jackets, signatures, errata slips, etc.). Even if it's a book you've sold before, it's still important to do this every time because prices change often, and, more often than not, head south. Though off-line comps may still be helpful in this process, it's usually much faster and more accurate to do this online, especially if you're going to be selling the book itself online.

Depending on relative scarcity, collectibility, issue-point complexities, etc., the amount of time that needs to be devoted to this varies widely. 9 times out of 10 it's sufficient to plug in a single ISBN number or author/title at a good meta search site. A page of listings comes up, you glance at it for a few moments, and you're done. If the book is relatively common, comps are common and readily evaluated. There's no need to visit another site and dump a hundred more in your lap. Occasionally, however, it's necessary to visit multiple search sites, look up titles in library catalogs, perform Google searches, post questions on forums, email dealers, and so on. Not fun, but some books are worth it. Demand it. And sometimes even this doesn't get it done. Sometimes you have to go off-line. Or guess.

The best comps, of course, are those that reflect a done deal - for example, eBay closed auctions. Unfortunately, information on sold books isn't plentiful. Fixed-priced sites, with exceptions noted below, don't provide it, and eBay closed auctions are available for only 10 days post-sale. At present there are no other major auction players in the online market.

Information on books that are currently for sale, however, teems. The problem with this is that quoted prices aren't always grounded in reality. An oft-repeated bookselling saw is that books listed for sale are comprised entirely of books that, after all is said and done, haven't sold, and since the value of a book is the price it sells for, there you are. Still, it's possible to gather useful valuation information on fixed-priced sites notwithstanding. I'm going to discuss several methods for doing this in this series of articles. Today I'm going to talk specifically about where to go.

Most often this is the search of first resort. A meta search site simultaneously searches multiple bookselling venues and delivers a list of matches in moments. At the time of this writing, there are 3 major meta search players in the book biz - AddALL, BookFinder and FetchBook. Each has advantages and disadvantages.

1. AddALL is perhaps the most frequently recommended of these. It's comprehensive, user-friendly, and reasonably though not overly fast. It searches new and used books. Results can be sorted by a number of useful parameters, most notably by price but unfortunately not by publisher. There are 48 listing partners listed on the website, though some of these are either no longer alive and kicking or so small as to be of little importance - in other words, '48' is something of a stretch. Most of the major venues are included. The exception is eBay, and it's a significant exception because in cases where there's a need to search this venue (often), it forces an additional step. Both BookFinder and FetchBook, by the way, do search eBay fixed-priced listings.

2. BookFinder is also comprehensive - 42 listing partners strong (including eBay) - and user-friendly but for some reason distinctly less quick, sometimes by a factor of 2 compared to AddALL. This comes into play hugely when a large number of books need to be searched, and it's the primary reason I don't often use BookFinder much. As with AddALL, new and used books are included and, again, searching by publisher isn't possible. Worse, there are no sort-by options, though a price range can be specified. Another noteworthy weakness of BookFinder is that browsing isn't facilitated. Results are not returned directly but grouped by variations of author, title, etc. - that is, a link must be clicked for actual results under an individual grouping to appear. Each group, in turn, must be investigated separately. Two or more steps to get home, and, sigh, more waiting.

   This latter weakness, however, is in some cases a strength. For example, there are times when it isn't clear what the title of a given publication is, even if you're holding the damn thing in your hands. Different titles may appear on the outside and inside of the book, sub-titles may confuse the issue, etc. Also, a book without an author may or may not be listed with its editor in the author field. Other factors can also confuse things, and it's nice to be able to browse through title groupings before committing to a full search of a single title. This is also very useful for book buying. If you collect books on pigeons, for example, you'll be able to browse through a list of titles to see what's available before looking at individual listings, which may number in the 100's or 1,000's. A similar search on AddALL would deliver all available listings in one adorable dump.

3. FetchBook lists a whopping 104 listing partners, eBay included. This is a significant leap over the other two meta search sites, and it's often manifested in the quantity and quality of its search results. Conventional wisdom would suggest that the lowest prices for books are typically found on eBay and/or Amazon Marketplace. Once you've used FetchBook for a period of time, however, you'll observe that this often isn't the case. FetchBook delivers its results in order of the cheapest price first, so this site works especially well for finding a good price on new or nearly new books - that is, in cases where factors like condition and edition state aren't likely to be an issue.