Pricing Used and Rare Books

Pricing books is mostly a matter of research and experience. There's no easy formula or rule of thumb — it's one of the reasons dealers specialize. No one can know the entire market. But if you're good, thorough, and willing to listen to your customers and other dealers, you can learn a specialty area in real depth.

There Is No Right Price

Decide what price range you want to slot yourself and your business into. If you want to price high, go ahead — but you'd better know your stuff. If you want to price low, do so — but do it knowingly, not because you don't know any better.

Books don't have a fixed price. Nothing is cast in stone. Prices move up and down with supply and demand. Authors die, movies are made, school curricula resurrect forgotten books, writers go in and out of fashion. A book is worth what a buyer is willing to pay and a seller is willing to accept. The more you know, the closer you'll get to the sweet spot — where the book sells in a reasonable time for a good price, and allows you to go on buying books. Not to mention groceries.

Start with the Market

Search ABEBooks and Biblio for the same edition in comparable condition. If there are hundreds of copies and all prices are low, you can usually stop there — in many cases it won't be worth your time to catalogue the book at all if it's that common and that low-priced.

If there are few copies, or most are relatively high-priced, you need to do proper research. Do not price better books strictly from the net. You need to understand what you are selling and why it's uncommon or valuable. If you neglect the research you will make some seriously embarrassing errors.

Build Your Research Library

For serious pricing you will need reference books — not just price guides, but auction records and bibliographies as well. In the beginning you may find them too expensive to buy and can use a good library. In the long run, if you are serious, you should be constantly upgrading your research library. The books won't seem so expensive once they've taught you something.

When You Can't Find a Title

If you can't find a particular title, look at other books by the same author. Generally the first book by an author will be the most valuable, and later books the least — though this is a very general rule with real exceptions. Also check the illustrator. Some illustrators are highly collectible — Tasha Tudor, Willy Pogany, Arthur Rackham, for example. Search both author and illustrator online; the more pages you find devoted to them, the stronger the market is likely to be.

Certain publishers are more valuable, particularly some of the fine presses. Even regular trade publishers tell you something — an art book published by Abrams is considerably more likely to have real value than one published by Bison, which are almost always reprints.

Check Library Holdings

For truly rare books, it can be instructive to check the holdings of major libraries. If a title appears in very few library catalogues worldwide, that tells you something about its scarcity. Useful starting points: the Library of Congress, Library and Archives Canada, and the British Library. WorldCat, which aggregates the holdings of thousands of libraries worldwide, is particularly useful: worldcat.org.

Check eBay Sold Listings

eBay allows you to check completed and sold listings going back 90 days. It's remarkable how often titles turn up — and actual sold prices are more useful than asking prices on the databases, because they reflect what buyers actually paid rather than what sellers hoped to get.

Don't Be a Sheep

Look at the book in your hand and develop a gut feeling for pricing. Just because someone has $10 on a book does not mean you have to price yours there. That $10 copy may no longer be available, may sell tomorrow, may be from a seller unpopular with buyers, or may be incorrectly identified. It may also just be mispriced. If you think your copy should be $100, price it at $100. The more you know, the more confident you can be in your own judgment — and the less you'll need to follow the herd.