Friday, June 27, 2008

At the Library - Foreign Languages and Making It Up as We Go Along


Last night, in between arguing with an 11 year old about Tom Clancy’s alleged autograph and confirming that we will not discount a book because the title is objectionable, I did a lot of Amazon listing.

A bunch of them were German language titles and still others were related to eastern religions. Both groups tend to lack in the ISBN department.

Having an ISBN prominently displayed makes the process of researching books go much faster. If there isn’t a good number, we are forced to look up a book by title and then search through to confirm the correct edition. It takes forever - and that is before factoring in a foreign language!

With these more rare books, sometimes there are no other listings on Amazon. In such cases, I have no idea of the estimated value and I have shied away from making it up.

Last night I went for it. Two trade paperbacks: one on Gayatri and one post WWII German language history book (pictured). I listed them at $15.00 each. Then there was an older, hard cover German language book with no other listing to give me an idea of the value. It was actually illustrated and had a dust cover, so I listed it for $20.00.

I went to the website first thing this morning, afraid that they had all been snapped right up because they were really worth hundreds of dollars.

Nope.

But a book on Borderline Personality Disorder sold.


In other news, tomorrow we are branching out again with a table at the Street Sale. I will not be there, but I can't wait to hear how it goes.

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