eBay

bugler1998 · ‎05-30-2020

With a bit more spare time available these days, I have tried to get more listings online.

One of my favorite book categories is local history. Closely related is Genealogy.

I pulled off a shelf 3 books all related to the family history of the Hubbell Family. These books have been published by the Hubbell Family Historical Society, a 501c3 qualified organization that I understand is dedicated to perpetuating the history of the Hubbell family. A quick wikipedia review shows the family pioneer came over from England in the 1600's, with descendants in all 50 states and Canada.

So far I have found nothing particularly notable about the Pioneer or his descendents other than they keep track of each other.

Having no interest in reading or holding the books, I thought I would list them on ebay. But at what price?

The one book I have researched the most so far is a 432 page Hardback printed in 1989 titled

'Hubbell Pioneers". The author is shown as Donald Sidney Hubbell, and it is published by the Historical Society.

There are quite a few listings in Worldcat saying issues exist in quite a few libraries. But I can find nothing else online. Amazon must have had a copy available at one time, but they show none currently available. None on ebay, abebooks, biblio or any of my usual book sourcing sites. Yet Worldcat shows copies in 15 libraries.

My question: What is going on here? Is this a tax dodge for somebody who donated to the Historical society?

Can the topic be so boring that nobody could possibly be interested in it?

Could the topic be so interesting that all available copies are immediately snapped up?

Im not asking anybody to do my research for me. I have just not seen this on an obviously well researched topic.

mmadigan · ‎06-01-2020

As you know this is the type of material I deal in and what you are seeing is what I would expect. Over the years I have had card files an later databases of customer wants and often I have never found the book in the "wild".

Often when an author publishes a genealogy the press run will be small 100-500 books. After all the "cousins" purchase a copy the author will donate some to local societies and libraries. The author will sometimes send flyers to libraries to try to sell some copies to recover their costs. Libraries will also purchase copies on the secondary market, that was where I came in. The fact you see 15 copies in libraries would not surprised me if it was published by a family society, since they want to share the info and a good way to do that is put a copy in a library.

If I would venture a guess for a book published ca 1990 you might think the original owner might have passed and the book would enter the market. Often what will happen the children will keep the book or the book will be passed onto another relative, thus no copy enters the market. Also it does not help there may have been only 100 copies published and sent to "cousins" all across the country. Often the authors are not book sellers and they may have no idea how to get rid of their excess inventory so they get stuck in a closet and as "new cousins" contact them over the years they will sell another copy. A good example of this back in the early 90's I was contacted by a seller who had multi copies of a mint genealogy published in 1910 still in their original shipping box for sale. I ended up buying 6 copies of the book. I believe the book was published by his grandmother and the books have been in closet all these years.

As the family start to die out or the kids loose interest in their history the books will start to enter the market.

I helped an author gather data for a book published in the late 80's and I just checked and I can not find it online. Over the years I have seen a copy or two cross Ebay. While on the other hand some genealogies there will be multiple copies for sale. I just checked on a book I have in stock published in 1981 and there are 8 copies for sale right now on Amazon.

With regard to pricing I have noticed two mindsets over the years. The first is that the book was most likely printed in a small press run and is some what rare so place a high asking price on the book. If someone wants the book they will purchase it. This will work if you are not in a hurry to sell the book. When I started selling books the largest dealers were Tuttles & Goodspeeds. I studied their catalogs and started to price my stock similar to theirs. I would describe the approach as what the average buyer might pay without having to think about the price three or four times. In other words they did not shoot for the top nor did they give their books away. Over the years I tend to price books based on the quality of the research, the size of the book, date and condition. If a book was published in 1980 with 150 pages it gets one price while another from 1980 with 600 pages gets another price. An approach you can use ask yourself if this book was about my family what would you pay to buy the book and then either adjust the price up if you know you are fugal or knock it down if you have disposal income you are willing to part with.

Matt

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mmadigan · ‎06-01-2020

As you know this is the type of material I deal in and what you are seeing is what I would expect. Over the years I have had card files an later databases of customer wants and often I have never found the book in the "wild".

Often when an author publishes a genealogy the press run will be small 100-500 books. After all the "cousins" purchase a copy the author will donate some to local societies and libraries. The author will sometimes send flyers to libraries to try to sell some copies to recover their costs. Libraries will also purchase copies on the secondary market, that was where I came in. The fact you see 15 copies in libraries would not surprised me if it was published by a family society, since they want to share the info and a good way to do that is put a copy in a library.

If I would venture a guess for a book published ca 1990 you might think the original owner might have passed and the book would enter the market. Often what will happen the children will keep the book or the book will be passed onto another relative, thus no copy enters the market. Also it does not help there may have been only 100 copies published and sent to "cousins" all across the country. Often the authors are not book sellers and they may have no idea how to get rid of their excess inventory so they get stuck in a closet and as "new cousins" contact them over the years they will sell another copy. A good example of this back in the early 90's I was contacted by a seller who had multi copies of a mint genealogy published in 1910 still in their original shipping box for sale. I ended up buying 6 copies of the book. I believe the book was published by his grandmother and the books have been in closet all these years.

As the family start to die out or the kids loose interest in their history the books will start to enter the market.

I helped an author gather data for a book published in the late 80's and I just checked and I can not find it online. Over the years I have seen a copy or two cross Ebay. While on the other hand some genealogies there will be multiple copies for sale. I just checked on a book I have in stock published in 1981 and there are 8 copies for sale right now on Amazon.

With regard to pricing I have noticed two mindsets over the years. The first is that the book was most likely printed in a small press run and is some what rare so place a high asking price on the book. If someone wants the book they will purchase it. This will work if you are not in a hurry to sell the book. When I started selling books the largest dealers were Tuttles & Goodspeeds. I studied their catalogs and started to price my stock similar to theirs. I would describe the approach as what the average buyer might pay without having to think about the price three or four times. In other words they did not shoot for the top nor did they give their books away. Over the years I tend to price books based on the quality of the research, the size of the book, date and condition. If a book was published in 1980 with 150 pages it gets one price while another from 1980 with 600 pages gets another price. An approach you can use ask yourself if this book was about my family what would you pay to buy the book and then either adjust the price up if you know you are fugal or knock it down if you have disposal income you are willing to part with.

Matt

jmgrobe · ‎06-01-2020

And of course a huge amount of books are just thrown away when no longer wanted.

--
Jonathan Grobe

bugler1998 · ‎06-04-2020

Thanks Mmadigan. How things get distributed are shown by how I came upon these 3 family genealogy books.

I went to this estate sale because i saw 8-10 local history books pictured at an estate sale ad. As I was not there at opening, all but 2 of the advertised books were already gone. I purchased the remaining 2 for $5 each, and almost missed the 3 genealogy books which were in a small shelf with religious books and went for $1 each. If I did not pick them up, they likely would have been discarded or donated.

I like how you mentioned a feeling for pricing books. My family is from Johnson County Illinois. They recently published an updated county history, and even though I am a cheapskate, I would probably spend $75- $100 for a well written book.

dreambooks · ‎06-14-2020

It's good that there is no other copy for sale. You can set your own price. You can lower your price after a few months. Someone interested may negotiate price with you.

On the other hand, if there are other copies for sale, it easily could be a rat race to the bottom.

But in general, the more specific the information in the book, the more valuable it is. If it contains family history of a specific region, it is easier to sell.

picture*books · ‎07-29-2020

Yes, there are many, many, many books that are not available for sale. Obviously there are a lot of obscure books that never surface for sale, but many highly popular books also.

As an example, in thirty years of book collecting, I've never a first edition copy of Runaway Bunny, written by Margaret Wise Brown and illustrated by Clement Hurd. During that same time, I've seen less than five copies of the first edition of their Goodnight, Moon collaboration (Michael AKA bibliomonster does have a copy, but has not offered it publicly for sale).