Rare Book Monthly
eBay Offers Trap Door on the Book Market
Selling on eBay isn't easy for everyone!
At the same time you are attracting an audience to specific listings you are also conveying a broader impression about what and how you list. To the extent eBayers find your listings interesting they'll add you to their favorite searches and choose to receive daily emails of your new postings. Think of this as a variation of Sally Field's Academy Award speech, "You like me. You really, really like me." Yup, that's what it means. Experienced sellers work hard to build a following.
If of course you are in a pure liquidation mode you start out prepared to get what you get and don't care if you sell cheap. For you victory is a clean house and eBay will help you do this.
There are two parts to your listing. At the top there is a header and subheader. On book listing sites books are listed by title and author. Not here. On eBay they are listed by hooks or search terms that you believe will bring buyers to your listing. So "A History of George Washington" in an eBay header might be "Washington History Inscribed Boards Levenger." This translates to the subject WASHINGTON, the type of material, HISTORY, a signed copy, INSCRIBED, the binding, BOARDS, and a past owner named LEVENGER. Think of this as chess, not checkers. This is all about hits or clicks on the listing.
In preparing the second part of the listing, the description, we now have the chance to create opportunities for searchers to find the listing. In doing this we need to be honest and complete while relentlessly answering the age old question: why should I buy this book? Show the title, author, date and place printed. Then look on listing sites for other copies to see how it's described. Look carefully at how book condition is evaluated. Now describe your book in appropriate terms. Is your copy in any way special? Has it been signed by the author or owned by someone? In every case mention this. Books that have been signed by their authors are always worth some premium but no, don't start practicing forged signatures. George Washington died in 1799 so he didn't sign your book that was printed in 1924. If your book has a jacket, mention this. They were uncommon before 1900. Condition is VERY important so be conservative.
Many people selling on eBay quit right here. Serious sellers go on. List the table of contents, perhaps the preface and book reviews if you can track them down. You are building a mountain of material that will create matches for buyers searching the eBay anthill. Consider using a scanner and optical character reader if you decide to get serious. You can scan pages of material in a few minutes that would take hours if you type it. Of course you may only be increasing the realized price by $10 so be realistic.
Setting the Price
Here we find out if you really want to sell. Again let's look on the listing sites for a sense of what the asking prices are. Let's say there are 4 copies. Three sound like yours and they are priced at $40, $60 and $75. There is also a signed copy [by the author] for $150. Yours is not signed so ignore the $150 copy. The average of the others is $58. Start the bidding at $15 or about 25%. You want bidders when they see the listing to say "this is interesting" and add it to the items they are following. You'll probably get about $30 for your copy. Chances are that if you look on the listing sites in three months all four copies that you used for price comparison will still be available while you have already converted the proceeds into baseball tickets.
