 The magazine of the Melbourne PC User Group Out-of-print Online Monika Merkes monika@melbpc.org.au |
Whilst e-commerce does not generally seem to have delivered on its promises, there is little doubt that the sale of books is a notable exception. Virtually everyone has heard of one of the big American businesses selling new books online (a tip - before putting in your order first compare prices at http://www.addall.com/) but not all know what a wonderful resource the Net is for locating those elusive rare and out-of-print titles.
I decided to ask Keith Richmond from The Basilisk Bookshop in Fitzroy http://www.BasiliskBookshop.com for some "inside information" on the best ways to look for an out-of-print book on the Internet.
KR: "Over the last few years there has been a huge growth in the number of used book sellers worldwide who list their stock online. In most cases dealers have an individual website, and it is possible to go there and check their stock. You may choose to visit a particular dealer because you have dealt with them before and were satisfied with the service and found them reliable, or because you discovered that they have the sorts of books that you are interested in. For example, one of our specialities is books on Asia, and people who regularly buy from us will often browse our stock holdings because we might have books that they are not aware of at the time.
If, however, you are looking for a particular book, it is probably best to go directly to one of the specialist search engines that collectively search the stock holdings of a large number of booksellers, such as abebooks
http://www.abebooks.com/. There are others, but abebooks is the largest, and it has more subscribed booksellers than other search engines.
There are also a couple of very good meta search engines, http://www.addall.com (click on 'used book listings') and
http://www.bookfinder.com. Obviously, the meta search engines are not as accurate and reliable as the individual search engines, because you effectively have two or three different data bases that have to interface. So if searching, it is always worth checking some of the individual sites.
When you look at these listings, you will probably find a wide range of prices just as you would if you went from one shop to another. Sometimes two apparently identical copies of a book will be offered by different dealers at wildly different prices. Most of the time though you will find that there is a reason for big price differences, such as the edition or condition of the volume. It may be that one copy is a fine first edition of a book that is signed by a prominent author, whilst the other is a beaten up paperback."
MM: "Do the search engines capture information about the condition of a book as well ?"
KR: "Absolutely. Most booksellers go through a reasonable amount of trouble to describe the condition of the book. It is important that you pay attention to this description, because many a bargain may turn out not to be such a bargain because of its condition, as when it is
'ex lib', meaning ex-library. Generally speaking, the more detailed the condition report is, the more likely the book is in a condition as described.
There is a certain jargon that most booksellers will use. English and Australian booksellers tend to use
'd/w' for dust wrapper, whereas the Americans might use 'd/j', dust jacket. Most of the search engines have glossaries of booksellers' terms.
As a rule of thumb, 'very good' means the book should be as close to new as can be expected for a second hand book. Any imperfections like a tear in the dust wrapper or dirty thumb print on one page should be noted.
'Good' means generally that it is a sound second hand copy, but it is obviously a second hand book, and anything less than
'good', such as 'fair' means it is pretty shabby. 'Reading copy' literally means just that - the print is still legible and the text is all there, but the book itself probably looks like it has been run over by a truck and left in a ditch for a week."
MM: "Okay, I have found this book and now I want to buy it. What do I have to do? What should I be aware of?"
KR: "The dealer's listing should include the edition, the condition and the price. If you want to order the book, you contact the dealer to ensure that it is still in stock, ask them to reserve it and quote you the postage and payment options. There is also a facility on abebooks just to search for books held by Australian dealers, which of course is cheaper in terms of postage, and easier in terms of making payment."
MM: "One of the concerns with e-commerce is security. What are your thoughts on this?"
KR: "A few people will have bad experiences, but the frequency of this seems to be greatly over-rated, and of course every time you use a credit card at a petrol station, a restaurant or whatever, you are giving them all the details they need (on the copy they keep) to perpetrate a fraud. With e-commerce it is exactly the same. However, even if someone should get hold of your card numbers and use them illegally, the Australian consumer is quite well protected, and you will almost certainly receive a refund, although it may take a while for the banks to sort it out. I might add that despite coming into contact with thousands of online book buyers and booksellers, I only know of one person that was victim of a fraud (someone fraudulently used his card details to pay for goods). His money was ultimately refunded, and of course there is nothing to suggest that the miscreant got his details over the Internet - it is possible that they were somehow intercepted online, but it would probably have been much easier to retrieve the receipts from a shop's garbage on rubbish night than to hack a secure server or intercept e-mails.
Most of the businesses online are legitimate bookshops. If you are concerned about security, see if they have a homepage. If it is a 'serious' business, they will have a shopfront, opening hours, a dedicated fax and phone line, and will (usually) accept all the major credit cards. They will not use special online payment options like "bidpay" or "paypal" which are usually only used by private people, who may sell books as a hobby. There are a lot of these `home operators' also listing books on the Internet, and I'm sure the great majority are legitimate, but it is probably riskier if you are dealing with them, because they may not have the requisite expertise (I often see books grossly misdescribed) and their
'private' nature makes it more difficult to obtain redress if something does go wrong.
Basically, it is a matter of common sense. If you are a little nervous about security, make sure you are dealing with an established business and not an amateur.
The other issue that people worry about is losing a book. It does happen, but very seldom. We have sent thousands of books through the post in the last year, and have lost two. In both cases, we reimbursed the purchaser, so they did not end up out of pocket. If it is an expensive book, I do recommend that you insure it. We won't ship a book valued at $100 or more unless it is registered or insured."
MM: "What sort of out-of-print books are people looking for?"
KR: "It might be nostalgic. People might be looking for a book that they loved and treasured as a child. It may be a historical work that they have read about in another book, or even an older technical manual, or they may be after a special copy (like a signed book) which links it to a particular person or event. Also, books do go out of print quite quickly, and then the only way to find them is in libraries and on the second hand market.
It can be extraordinary what the Internet shows up. About six months ago, a chap came into our shop, asking for a very specific Italian-language architecture book. It was a large folio, printed about twenty years ago, in an edition of 500 copies, and its original retail was something like US$500. When he explained this, I thought it quite unlikely there would be any copies of the book in Australia. I told him how to look it up on the Internet, and warned him 'If you find a copy, it will probably be in Italy or America, and you will be up for a fair amount of postage'. He came back the next day and offered profuse thanks. He had only found two copies of the book listed for sale: one was in Florence and the other, which he bought, was in a bookshop less than 15 minutes drive from us.
One of the joys of the Internet is that we now sell books we would have never thought of selling, to places we would never have thought of selling to. For example, we recently had an order from Norway for a South African local history. I suppose it makes sense: South African history books are cheaper here than in South Africa, and the buyer, was - I think - a South African ex-pat living in Norway.
No matter how obscure a book is, it is worth checking. On occasion we have had books that I thought nobody would ever look for, they were so obscure. Not long ago we had a very ephemeral Dutch publication from the 1920s on ancient Egyptian crossword puzzles. It seemed so unusual that I seriously doubted whether anyone knew of its existence, let alone would actually be bothering to search for it. Still, I listed it and a few weeks later it was bought by a Dutch gentleman and went back to Holland."
MM: "On behalf of the Melbourne PC User Group, thank you."
Monika Merkes
monika@melbpc.org.au
http://www-sph.health.latrobe.edu.au/bbww/
Reprinted from the September 2001 issue of PC Update,
the magazine of Melbourne PC User Group, Australia
