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How To Sell Books:
The process of consigning your books to auction
begins with either a phone call to Tom Gullotta (1-860-908-8067) or
by
sending him an e-mail. Tom will discuss your books with you and
assist you in determining whether it is a wise decision for your books to
go to auction. We know that you have many questions about the value of your
books and have prepared the following primer on bookselling to assist you
in your decision making process.
A Primer on Bookselling
Swamped with Books?
For several years CFA Book Auctions have been helping
collectors wishing to downsize their collection and estate trustees
wishing to properly dispense a book collection. For purposes of
convenience (admittedly ours) we’ve limited this service to the New
England states with a rare foray into New York State and New Jersey.
CFA Book Auctions is prepared to do the following to
assist the bibliophile in downsizing or the trustee in selling a client's
library. We will examine your collection and provide you with a realistic
estimate of the value of your collection at auction. (Note: This is not an
appraisal for IRS purposes.) If your collection is determined to meet
certain sale criteria, we will auction it for you, or we can arrange for
the charitable donation of the library. Among these options there are a
multitude of variations that can also be discussed. This experience has
taught us several lessons that we intend to share with you as you decide
what to do with your collection. If after reading this material you would
like to discuss this matter further, then please call Tom Gullotta at
1-860-908-8067 or
send him an e-mail.
Q: When do people call CFA Book Auctions for help?
A: People call when:
- Their collection has outgrown the library, the living room, the
attic, and finding a pathway to the bedroom now entails climbing
through an outside window into bed they share with - you guessed it -
books.
- They are not current with book values and are in
the midst of settling an estate for a loved one.
- They are downsizing and moving to a new location.
- The offer they have received for their book
collection just does not sound right.
Q: How do I absolutely positively maximize my profit
from the sale of a book collection?
A: Sell them yourself. The only way to assure yourself that you are
getting exactly what you want for your books is by setting your own prices
and dealing directly with potential buyers. There are large data bases to
advertise used books for sale on the Internet, including
abebooks.com and
amazon.com. They will offer your books
worldwide, in return for a 15 - 20% commission on each sale plus (in some
cases) monthly advertising costs. Gathering packing supplies, shipping the
books, and handling any returns will be up to you. With this approach, some
volumes will sell immediately, and others may never sell. Between these two extremes, once you’ve
written ads for and competitively priced approximately 3,000 volumes, if
the material is interesting and in good condition, you can expect to
sell 2 to 3 books a day on the various used book sites.
Q: I don’t have the time or the patience for that
approach. What are my other options?
A: First, recognize that if someone else now becomes
involved, your profit may decline. On the other hand, if the sale of your
books is handled well, the overall dollars realized may be much higher.
Certainly, you will realize a return on your collection much sooner. Your
options are: 1) garage sale, 2) book dealer sale, 3) uncatalogued auction
sale, 4) catalogued auction sale and 5) charitable donation.
Option 1 - Garage or tag sale.
The garage or tag sale entails you or
someone else pricing the volumes in the collection, then putting them out
on tables, advertising the sale, and having the public purchase them. We have seen this approach
work to the owner’s benefit when the books are newer (from 1960 to the
present date), and seller's expectations are modest. You can reasonably expect
to sell some books between $1 and $5 each with this approach. It is likely
that 50% or more
of the collection will go unsold. You must then develop a plan to donate or dispose of the
remainder.
Incidentally, some books will likely
never sell. These include school textbooks, book club volumes, encyclopedias, worn
paperbacks (unless from the 1950s or earlier and in decent condition), and
National Geographic Magazines, and any books which are moldy, badly
stained, marked up or in generally poor condition. So, do yourself a favor and get rid of
these before the sale.
Option 2 - The bookshop.
The bookshop owner is becoming an
increasingly endangered species. Certainly, if your community is fortunate
enough to still have an open used bookshop, then invite the owner to view
the collection. Don’t be shocked if the book dealer expresses an interest
in only a few of the higher end or more unusual volumes. The dealer hopes
these few higher end volumes will sell quickly thus enabling her or him to
recoup their investment.
Every used bookshop has their own method of arriving at an offer for a
collection of books, but in general you can expect their overall offer to
be 10 - 30% of what they expect to realize when selling the books. The
higher end of that range tends to apply if the dealer is "cherry-picking"
(taking only the books he is most interested in and leaving you to dispose
of the rest), the lower end is more common if he's making a simple offer
to clear everything out. Unfair, you say! Consider this. Our experience is that
even in the best of collections one third of the collection is not
sellable. On several occasions, we have dealt with collections
in which more than 95% of the books are unsellable. The dealer in her
or his offer tries to estimate how quickly they can recover their
investment, while keeping the store's rent paid and the lights and heat
on. In today’s economy very few bookstore owners can wait more
than a year before recouping their initial outlay. Another
factor to consider when a book dealer wishes to purchase or an auction
house agrees to accept for consignment small number of books from a large
collection is what will happen to the remainder. The removal of 5%
of a collection by a skilled professional may well drop
the overall value of the other 95% to next to nothing.
Option 3 - Uncatalogued auction.
The uncatalogued auction is also known as the “pick” auction. This is the
model we use at CFA Book Auction. The way this works is that a collection of books determined to be resalable is removed to the
auction location and unpacked onto tables. The auction house advertises
the book auction as a “pick” or uncatalogued auction using their mailing
list, an antiques and auction-oriented newsprint vehicle like the “Newtown Bee,” and
other appropriate advertising venues in print and on the Internet. On the day of the
auction and prior to admitting the public, the auctioneer, who should be a
bibliophile at heart, reviews the stock and selects some higher priced volumes to
be bid on separately or in small lots.
At least two hours before the sale, the sale room is opened and the
books are available for inspection by the public. Potential purchasers can assemble a
group of similar books (typically up to ten) to form a lot. The potential
bidder understands that (s)he must bid on this lot. The usual starting bid
is $10. Uncatalogued auctions attract collectors, flea market dealers,
bookstore owners, and Internet book dealers. Books purchased at an uncatalogued auction are bought as is, and all sales are final. At the end
of the sale, any unsold books which have not been selected and sold in
lots are auctioned to the highest bidder by the
table.
Uncatalogued
auctions are labor intensive for relatively small returns to the auction
house, and for that reason few book auctioneers hold
this type of sale any longer. This is regrettable, because in our opinion, the overwhelming
number of books in most collections are most effectively sold in this type of sale. The
auctioneer's commission for an uncatalogued auction is generally 25% to 33% of the gross
receipts.
Option 4 - Catalogued Auction.
The next option is the catalogued auction.
Catalogued books auctions include volumes of higher assumed value due to factors such as the
title, author, edition, condition, scarcity, and established demand. These
titles are researched with past performance at auction taken into account.
The auction house assigns an estimated selling range (low to high) and the
books are described in a catalogue that is distributed to potential
bidders. The successful bidder may return the book after purchase to the
auction house if it is not as represented in the auction catalogue.
While the auction house takes a gamble on the books at an uncatalogued
auction (since most books in these sales are of modest value), in a catalogue
auction the auction house has a much clearer idea
of the expected income to be realized. From the standpoint of labor, it is
also much easier to transport and display at auction 200 to 300 volumes
than it is to transport and display 3,000 to 5,000 volumes.
The auctioneer's commission for a catalogued book sale usually starts
at 2- 25%, it may decrease for items of unusually high value or through
seller/auctioneer negotiation on particularly valuable items or
collections.
Option 5 - Charitable Donation.
The final option for the seller is the charitable
donation. Since the proceeds from CFA Book Auctions all go towards a
non-profit organization, we are familiar with the mechanics of charitable
donations and can advise you of some.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Q: About book values, I've spent thousands of dollars
at Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other bookshops since 1960 on new books
that I am told are worth only a fraction of what I paid for them.
A: Unfortunately, this may be true. In some cases, the first printing
of the
first edition of a modern novel or art book with its dust jacket in fine (nearly new)
condition will sell for more than a later printing without these
characteristics. But every book has a first edition, and a far more
important question is does this book have a buyer? A book is worth only as
much as a someone is willing to pay for it, and many excellent books for a
variety of reasons have little to no resale value. Further, you need to
recognize that you purchased your books at retail and not wholesale prices.
Just as with cars and furniture, on the secondary market the best you can
expect in most cases is a fraction of that original retail price.
Q: But wait, I have been told that the Longfellow and
Whittier poetry I bought in a used bookstore in the 1950s is worth less
than I paid for it, too!
A: With the advent of the Internet many businesses
and especially the secondhand book business changed dramatically. With a few
exceptions, most books published since 1960 are readily available at
prices far below their initial listed price. Other books, including those by the
authors listed above have in many cases declined in value as
interest in the author has
declined and the number of available used copies has risen to outstrip the
demand. That said, there are exceptions to this general observation. For
example, a book like To Kill a Mockingbird which had relatively
small first printing can sell for thousands of dollars if in its original dust
jacket and pristine condition, as might the first edition of the British publication of Rowling's first Harry Potter
adventure. Either of these popular and much-reprinted books in a later
printing and in good readable condition might retails in a bookstore or
online for $1 - 5, and so will likely not appeal to most of those who are
buying for resale.
Q: Ok, I might concede your last point, but in
checking prices on the Internet at used book sites I find that the book I
own is listed for sale at $1,000, at $10, and at several other prices in
between. What gives?
A: A variety of factors might be involved including
condition (bumped corners, cover wear, interior highlighting, book club
edition, etc.), whether the less expensive book has its dust jacket (in
some cases, mostly 20th Century fiction, a clean dust jacket can increase a "collectable" book's
value by a factor of 10). Also, is the higher priced volume signed by the author or
illustrator, and is that person Ernest Hemingway or Maurice Sendak? The
list goes on and in these times must include the possibility that an
inexperienced book dealer simply pulled his asking
price for this volume out of a hat. In fact, more often than not this is
the case. Especially when selling over the Internet, over time other book dealers with the same item choose
to offer the same volume in the same or better condition at a lower
price.
Q: How do I then determine the "true" value of a
book?
A: If you have some items you feel are truly valuable and are willing to invest the money, you
can purchase prior sales records from the auction houses that specialize in
books on CD for about $750. These records are the best indication of what a group of people in
a competitive environment (the auction) were willing to pay for truly
valuable books.
A word of caution, as you research your book remember that condition, dust
jacket for modern books, and some signatures can be very important. The
state of the economy is important as well. Collectibles like valuable books, art work, stamps, antique furniture and the
like tend to increase in value during good times and decline in value
in difficult economic times. If you are passionately interested in the
subject areas represented in your collection, you probably have a pretty
good idea of the actual desirability and likely practical selling price
for your books. But if you are settling an estate or just want to sell
"those books from the barn," you will probably best be served with some
professional advice, which CFA Book Auctions stands ready to provide.
Q: You used the word “resellable” in the description
of uncatalogued auctions. What does that term mean?
A: In terms of monetary value and marketability, books fall into general categories
and it often takes experience and practical knowledge gathered over a
lifetime to spot the differences. Surprisingly, age in and of itself is
not often a major factor -- literally millions of books were produced
worldwide in the 1700s, and probably hundreds of millions just in America
in the 1800s, and for most the survival rate compared to the demand for
them is actually quite high . The most
desirable, “collectable” books are rather scarce. First editions of Tom Sawyer, To
Kill a Mockingbird, and Origin of the Species, some finely
illustrated books, important works in history and science and the like
make up this category.
There is a known, well-documented market of buyers and a good history of
prior sales records for books of this type. The number of books in the "collectable" category is quite small.
The next category is what we will call “resellable.” These are books that
while not necessarily rare or particularly expensive, are attractive in
appearance, may have unique qualities (limited edition, beautifully
illustrated, etc.), or may be the works of respected, but more obscure authors
in subject areas where there is continuing interest. In general, one
rule of thumb is "more specific, the better." A book called "The History
of Italian Art," although large and beautifully illustrated, may be
dud in commercial terms, while a much smaller book on "Religious Imagery
in Italian Textile Work between 1780 - 1830" is likely to be far more “resellable.”
"Resellable" books do not always command top dollar but a bookseller
buying for resale knows that
there is a good probability that appropriately priced they will sell, and
thus will be eager to buy them. The
last category is “disposable” books. These include book club editions,
encyclopedias, most 19th century and virtually all 20th century textbooks
at any grade level, most
paperbacks, and most bibles. These are the books that often find their way
into boxes labeled “free for the taking."
Q: You listed several options and then suggested that
variations on those options existed. Can you give me an idea of what that
might mean?
A: As an example, we recently worked with a family with a very large collection.
We
identified several potentially quite valuable volumes that we arranged to send to
New England Book Auctions to be properly
researched and sold in one of their cataloged auctions as described above.
Next, we identified that part of the library that should be sold at one of
our own uncatalogued auction sales, and lastly helped to remove those books that could be donated or sold
at a garage sale. Yes, you read that correctly. CFA Book Auctions works
with other auction houses to help our clients maximize the sale potential
for their collections at all levels.
For more information on how we partner with New England Book Auctions and
others, please
contact us.
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