Q&A: How can I sell this scarce candy-making book?

QUESTION: I have a book entitled The Science & Art of Candy Manufacturing by Claude D. Barnett. The book was published in 1978 and has no ISBN. Amazon's catalog has a book by the same author but the title is different: The Art & Science of Candy Manufacturing, with the words art and science in reverse order. The author, year, and page count are the same. No copies are available.

I can find only one copy of this book with the same title, offered by a bookseller in The Netherlands.

How I should list the book on Amazon, since only Pro-Merchants can create catalog pages? I don't want to list my book with the listing Amazon already has, since my title isn't exactly the same.

ANSWER: Sounds like you have quite a gem there. That's exactly the kind of scarce nonfiction book people will pay really good money for, either someone who works at a candy maker, or a hobbyist.

There's also a listing for a 1960 book by the same author on Amazon, Candy Making as a Science and an Art, also unavailable. Elsewhere, several copies of the 1960 book are available, and at the bottom we see the Netherlands bookseller with his 1978 book.

It seems whoever entered the 1978 title on Amazon transposed the two words, art and science. It's not likely there were two printings in 1978 with different titles.

I think you have two options:

1. List the book under Amazon's incorrect title. Anyone searching Amazon for the correct title will find your listing. You can list the book as "Acceptable" and then describe the discrepancy in capital letters in your Sellers Comments and indicate the real condition. Listing it as "Acceptable" helps ensure the buyer reads your description.

2. Assuming you're not going to go Pro-Merchant in the near future (which enables you to create catalog pages for pre-ISBN books), you can submit a correction for the existing page to Amazon's cataloging department. Toward the bottom of each book detail page, there's a blue box labeled "Feedback" with a link for "updating product info."

On that page, you can check the box for "title" and enter the correct title. Any Amazon user can do this, they don't even have to be a seller. In my experience, Amazon gets those corrections updated on its Web site in less than a week -- usually. You might add in parentheses after your correction (I am certain I have the correct tile) just so they take you seriously.

But I'd suggest you list the book immediately on Amazon's page with the incorrect title since somebody could be searching for this book to give as a holiday gift.

The problem is how to price it. I've sold a couple of different technical books about food (not cookbooks) for over $100. But I've never had the good fortune to have one this scarce, where there's virtually no copies available in the hemisphere. So I wouldn't think of listing it for under $200. There's just no good way to figure out the value, though, it's too specialized.

We know the 1978 book is harder to come by, and I suspect there may be some valuable patent information in it that doesn't appear in the 1960 book.

The seller in the Netherlands priced it at about $200. So I wouldn't have any qualms about pricing it at $400 or $500. If a candy maker needs this book, you're not going to blow a hole in their research budget.

Sweet!