Q&A: How can I discover what a rare book is worth?
QUESTION: How do I know how to price a book when there are no others listed on Amazon? And how would I know if there were a buyer waiting? The latest book I've come across is a Spanish novel, ISBN 8424506464.
ANSWER: You can tell if there's a pending order by going to the book's detail page on Amazon (by searching for the ISBN) and clicking "sell yours here" and list the condition as "new." Click through to the next screen and, if there's at least one pending order, you'll see an orange box labeled "BUYER WAITING!" like the one shown here. You can close your browser before clicking to actually list the book.
You're right, the ISBN 8424506464 is pretty uncommon, at least in the United States. Usually you can find listings for English-language books at the AddAll search engine or BookFinder.
This one, 8424506464, has only a few Google results. If you're really interested in determining the value, you might be able to find some overseas store listings for it and convert the currency to dollars. Not sure if it's worth the trouble -- just because the book is scarce doesn't necessarily mean it's in demand.
When you come across books that aren't listed on Amazon, but you do see listings on AddAll or BookFinder, you can usually list it on Amazon at a higher price and get a prompt sale, assuming there's some demand for the book.
Occasionally I'll sell a foreign-language book for a good price but honestly most of them never sell. I guess if you aren't fluent in other languages (like me), it's hard to scout non-English books.
There are lots of pitfalls with pending Buyers Waiting orders. I wrote two long articles for BookThink where I discuss just about everything I know about pending orders. Those articles are here and here.
You can also view the top pending pre-orders here on my site, and read a bit more about it in my book "The Home-based Bookstore."
posted by Steve Weber at 8/06/2006
4 Comments:
What if the book doesn't have an ISBN - such as my 1976 paperback? (I, too, was wondering the worth of this book as it is all over the place on Abebooks and Addall).
Anonymous,
If I were you, I'd create a product detail page on Amazon for your 1976 paperback and list it, perhaps at the highest price you can find elsewhere -- or above.
If there is any demand for the book, you can likely sell it on Amazon at your price. You'll only need one buyer to agree to your price. I've been in the same situation (though never with a paperback). Sometimes I've listed at triple the highest price I could find elsewhere, and sold the book promptly on Marketplace.
As you may know, you must have an Amazon Pro-Merchant account to create a page for the book. Here's a link to the instructions.
Uh, unless I am missing something (and I hope I am). Amazon Product creation page will require an ISBN (or UPC of like a VHS video) before the interface will let you continue. It is one of the reason such items get listed in our eBay store instead of Amazon. Seems pretty stupid of Amazon, but it wouldn't be the first stupid requirement of theirs. If there is a way around this limitation please edify me!
Whoop! Retraction! Just reviewed link Steve provided and it states that UPC is required for certain products (e.g. video), but ISBN is NOT required for books. Sorry, about that, recently tried to create a product page for a video and thought I had ran into it with books too. My bad. Reverse that, scratch that. :-)
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