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In addition to my own recently published list entitled Some Ugly Ducklings Amongst Used Books, 2007, described in the previous post, here are some other lists I’ve found interesting or helpful. The first is Steve Weber’s list of 16 unusual books he’s sold for $100 or more each on pp. 26 and 27 of his 2006 book The Home-Based Bookstore.The second is a similar list of 15 books given by Michael Mould on p. 73 of his book Online Bookselling, also published in 2006.  These two lists are ones an online bookseller might occasionally encounter, although, as Steve says of his list, “The objective here is not to memorize all the titles so that you can begin looking for them this weekend, but to begin developing your sixth sense for recognizing esoteric books.”  I’ve found these lists helpful because they’ve definitely given me ideas for particular types of books to keep an eye out for.  These are also books for which any copy in good condition has value, not just first editions or signed copies. The third is an online list at the UK-oriented BookRide website that’s frequently updated and includes some of the extremely rare and antiquarian books that periodically bring thousands of dollars at auction.  This list is described as “a guide to the most wanted and collected books” and some of its selections are based on eBay auction prices.  This list I find interesting but not very useful because books in this price range are well-known in the trade and the only place I ever see one is in a locked display cabinet at one of the larger used bookstores. The fourth is a thread in the eBay Booksellers discussion board entitled “A book that looks like nothing.”  This list is interesting but so voluminous that I find it difficult to peruse, and it’s not always easy to determine when a particular title needs to be a first edition or a signed copy to bring a high price. I have to admit that I haven’t had much success finding the books listed in Some Ugly Ducklings, although they’ve certainly given me ideas about types of books to keep an eye out for.  The exception has been books in the Agatha Christie Bantam leatherette collector’s edition series, which I’ve encountered from time to time at a variety of sources of inventory.  

Some Ugly Ducklings Amongst Used Books, 2007 is a new $4.99 ebook listing 58 ordinary-appearing, even nondescript, used books that can actually be worth $100 or more has just been released. This list focuses on books that can occasionally be found amongst used books at FOL (Friends of the Library) sales, thrift stores, estate sales, and even yard sales.  It’s available in Mobipocket format (ISBN 1-59243-302-2, publisher Peverell Press) directly from Mobipocket.com and will soon be available from a number of other online ebookstores such as Fictionwise as well. You’ll need to download the appropriate version of the free Mobipocket Reader software for your PDA, Pocket PC, smart phone, or computer to be able to read it.  Although this ebook can be certainly be read on a desktop or laptop computer, it’s specifically designed for a handheld portable device so that you can take it along with you to refer to at stores and sales.  Here are the table of contents and some excerpts from the introduction.

Table Of Contents

Introduction
Fiction — Horror: Hardcover
Fiction — Horror: Paperback
Fiction — Fantasy: Hardcover
Fiction — Fantasy: Paperback
Fiction — Science Fiction: Paperback
Fiction — Mystery, Thriller: Hardcover
Fiction — Mystery, Thriller: Paperback
Fiction — Modern Literature: Hardcover
Fiction — Modern Literature: Paperback
Fiction — Romance: Paperback
Nonfiction — Hobbies & Crafts: Hardcover
Nonfiction — Hobbies & Crafts: Paperback
Nonfiction — Art: Hardcover
Nonfiction — Art: Paperback
Nonfiction — Other: Hardcover
Nonfiction — Other: Paperback

From the Introduction

About This Ebook

This list of 58 “ugly ducklings” in the used book world was compiled in late 2007 with used booksellers (myself included) specifically in mind. I’m using the term “ugly duckling” here to suggest something of unusual latent value that wouldn’t normally merit a second glance. In this case it’s a superficially unremarkable used book with demonstrated high market value on eBay. This list is a completely original one — you won’t find it anywhere else — and it’s unique in that it focuses on sought-after “ordinary” books as opposed to well-known valuable ones.

“Ugly Ducklings” vs. Rare Books

There’s no question that rare collectible books are the most valuable ones, but, as fascinating as it might be, a list that begins with a signed first edition of J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher In The Rye and continues in that vein is unlikely to be of great help to a used bookseller for two reasons.First, these extremely valuable books are so scarce as to be very seldom encountered — it’s their extreme rarity that gives them their value. Second, identifying books in this league is fraught with pitfalls.  Is this actually a true first edition?  Is the signature indeed Salinger’s, or is this perhaps a clever forgery, as elemental analysis of the ink using a scanning electron microscope might reveal?

Book World Frauds and Hoaxes

There’ve been several high-profile cases of cleverly forged manuscripts in the past few decades. The “Hitler Diaries” hoax that took in Time magazine and the fraudulent “Salamander Letter” (which added the dramatic element of parcel bombs to outright forgery!) come to mind.  Both have extensive entries in the Wikipedia so I’ll merely allude to them here. The main point is that the more money there is involved with something collectible or of historical interest, the greater the incentive to defraud or at least to reproduce in facsimile edition.

“Ugly Duckling” Used Books

More useful to the average used bookseller is a list of valuable but superficially unremarkable books that one might actually encounter at a yard sale, rummage sale, FOL (Friends of the Library) sale, or thrift store. By “ordinary” I mean a book published in the last 20 or 30 years, as opposed to a musty, yellowed, antiquarian book, and one without any of the special attributes that would clearly identify it as a collector’s item.

Not Signed First Editions

In other words, this isn’t a list of signed first editions. To reemphasize, “ugly duckling” books, as I’m using the term here, are those that might be found mixed in with all the rest at yard sales, on the main shelves of thrift stores, and at rummage sales. They’re also generally not the ones set aside for the “rare books” or “better books” section at a big Friends of the Library sale, let alone the ones sometimes found in glass display cases at estate sales.

. . .

More About the List

I’ve confined this list primarily to books with ISBNs because that’s the most reliable way to identify specific ones when multiple editions have been published, although there will still be the complexity of recognizing and avoiding book club editions in some cases.  This list is divided into genres and binding types to make it easier to refer to, especially since this is the way used books are often organized at thrift stores as well as large Friends of the Library and rummage sales.In addition to pointing out authors, titles, and editions of particular value, perusing this list can also call to your attention certain minor genres such as books on knitting that you might otherwise overlook.

How Has This List Been Assembled?

This list has been painstakingly compiled from completed sales of individual books on eBay in late 2007.  In cases where the book is a true first edition (meaning also a first printing) that’s because, as best I can determine, no subsequent printings or editions were issued. Some of these books are “sleeper titles” or cult classics that gained popularity with a small group of enthusiastic fans several years or even decades after their publication.

Price and Condition

The prices given here are for copies that are in good or very good condition — a paperback that’s gotten dropped in the bathtub or left out in the rain is another story!  In most cases, these are also not ex-library copies, and hardcovers will usually need good dust jackets to command prices in this neighborhood.

How Much Should You Pay For One of These Books If You Find One?

For reasons to be discussed later on, there’s no guarantee of getting anything close to the price of one of the books on this list, should you be fortunate enough to find one.  For that reason, as a general rule I’d personally only pay $1 to $3 (in other words, typical yard sale and thrift store prices) for one unless I could be absolutely certain that it didn’t have some subtle but important defect and that it was a book that brought a high price consistently, not just once in awhile.

eBay As an Information Source

Obviously the current eBay auction prices of specific books can be very useful information, and the range of recent prices is important as well. However, if you look at completed listings on eBay, you’ll also find the starting bids for some books that didn’t sell informative, such as first editions of John Grisham novels priced at $200.The information about specific books on this list is taken directly from the eBay listings, which are sometimes incomplete in that they may omit the ISBN or the name of the publisher.  For the most part I haven’t attempted to fill in missing information for fear of introducing inaccuracies in the process of doing so.

Using an Ebook

Although it’s certainly possible to read an ebook on your desktop or laptop computer, this list of “ugly duckling” books is really intended for use with a PDA, Pocket PC, or smart phone which you carry with you when you’re out looking for books to buy.

Where This List Will Come in Handy

As you read over this list, no doubt some titles will immediately strike you and stick in your memory.  However, if you encounter one of these books a month or two from now, you may wonder about some detail you have difficulty recalling, like the publisher or the publication date. In such cases, you can quickly consult this ebook to refresh your memory and check important details.

More About Using Ebooks

Ebooks are digital documents which have the advantage that they’re searchable, so you can quickly find a book using the author’s name or a word or two from the title. However, they’re not databases, so you’ll find that you can’t sort the listings.Depending on your reading device and ebook reader software, you may also be able to highlight, bookmark, or annotate specific passages.You’ll notice that each of the books on this list has a tiny thumbnail image showing its cover, which can obviously be helpful in spotting it or in confirming that a copy you’ve found is the same edition.  Depending on your reading device and ebook reader software, you may be able to expand this image to a full-screen view simply by tapping on it.Another useful feature of ebooks to keep in mind is that you can easily expand or shrink the text for convenience in reading.

A Field-Tested Guide

This ebook is field-tested in the sense that I’ve used it extensively myself and have optimized it for use on my antiquated ViewSonic V35 Pocket PC. The V35 was a humble and limited Pocket PC model even at the time of its introduction, let alone by today’s standards, so if you have a newer Pocket PC, PDA, or smart phone, you should find the speed of access excellent.

Your Own List

Why can’t you compile your own list simply by searching for completed book sales on eBay?  If you’re an eBay member, you certainly can, and, in fact, it’s an excellent idea to do so because you’re certain to pick up additional valuable books — ones that happened not to come up for auction while I was in the process of compiling my list.

. . .

Why eBay Rather Than Amazon.com?

Why use eBay rather than Amazon.com for prices?  Amazon Marketplace listings show the asking price for books, not completed sales, and the phenomenon of  “highballing” (listing a book for much more than other comparable copies, a puzzling phenomenon pondered from time to time in the Amazon Sellers forums) means that the highest asking price is not always a reliable indication of a book’s actual value.  The price at auction is much better in this regard, although this list does also include some books sold at a fixed price by eBay stores or using eBay’s Buy It Now listing option.

Why Use a List Rather Than a Scanner?

Why use a list rather than a scanner? Of course, you can certainly use this list in conjunction with a PDA or cell phone scanner — they’re by no means mutually exclusive alternatives.  However, at a yard sale you might not want to advertise yourself as used bookseller by using a scanner, feeling that your hosts will be more amenable to negotiating prices with you if they don’t regard you as unabashedly mercenary.At a crowded Friends of the Library sale, you might want to be able to pick books faster than your competitors using scanners. And, of course, you can always glance quickly through shelves or rows of books to see if any on this list catch your eye before setting in to scan them methodically.Picking out a valuable book by a quick glance at the shelves would be using the intuitive technique Malcolm Gladwell calls “thin-slicing” in his book Blink.  Without discussing his ideas about the brain and information processing in detail, suffice it to say that “thin-slicing” relies on a framework of previously acquired information as opposed to sheer clairvoyance.

Amazon or eBay for Selling?

If you find one of these books, should you sell it in Amazon Marketplace or another online venue like Alibris, or auction it on eBay? That depends on how soon you want to get a monetary return on it. What I’d personally do is list it first on Amazon.com at something like the eBay price. If it hasn’t sold after some reasonable period based on its sales rank, even with a modest price reduction or two, then I’d think about auctioning it on eBay, where I’d probably set a low starting bid to attract more bidders, with no reserve, and take the risk of getting a disappointing price for it.

Listed Price vs. Current Price

Will you get the listed price for one of these books? That question is a difficult one to answer because the price depends on supply and demand. As an extreme example, if there were only two bidders for a particular book on eBay and the losing bidder subsequently won another copy, the market for high-priced copies may have been saturated, and your copy may bring much less at this point in time.Supply and demand can work the other way too, so I’d check the price of comparable copies on Amazon.com and be sure not to underprice my copy if it looks like the eBay buyer got a bargain.

. . .

The Bantam Agatha Christie Collector’s Editions

While many titles in the Bantam leatherette collector’s series issued in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s are quite common, a few are scarce and hence can be sought after by collectors, selling at times for more than $100 each on eBay. However, if you do a little reading about books in this series in the eBay booksellers discussion boards (just search for “Agatha Christie price”), you’ll find that there’s considerably more complexity here than might appear on the surface.For example, although most of the books in this series you’ll encounter (or, at least, the ones that I’ve encountered so far) are published by Bantam and have a tiny gilt rooster symbol on the spine, a few are later editions published by Literary Express which  lack the symbol and are considerably less valuable to collectors. To make matters more confusing, there are editions of one or two titles that say “Bantam” on the spine but “Literary Express” on the title page!And, as eBay forum contributors note, prices for these books can fluctuate dramatically even in a short period of time. One contributor reports getting only a deeply disappointing $10 for his copy of a title that had brought $100 just a few days before because another seller also listed a copy, saturating a tiny niche market.

eBay Prices and Supply

Will you get the historic prices if you auction books from this list on eBay? Be aware that many booksellers do keep an eye on book sales on eBay.  If a particular book brings a high price, they’ll scurry to ferret out additional copies and the supply may suddenly jump as a result.

. . .

Prices and Broader Factors

In the broader picture, seasonal factors may enter into auction prices too, with people making their big expenditures before Christmas and becoming more frugal in January and February.  General economic conditions may also play a role. For example, at the time of this writing, consumer confidence is down due to fears of an imminent recession, and this may be reflected in much lower prices for collectible books in general. However, it’s not entirely clear that this is inevitably the case because sales of high-end luxury items are generally reported to hold up well during economic downturns.

REFERENCES

Gladwell, Malcolm.  2005. Blink. New York: Little, Brown, and Co.  296 pp.  ISBN 0-316-01006

In a recent customer review on Amazon.com I ran across an unusual reason for buying a Kindle — because it’s so convenient for reading when dining out! This reviewer pointed out that, unlike an ordinary book, which can be hard to rest on the table and keep open while eating, a Kindle ebook’s pages don’t flop back and forth, and the Kindle takes up less table space than an open book. Turning a page with the press of a button is also a welcome convenience.

With all the recent publicity, especially the Newsweek cover story, about Amazon’s new ebook reading device, you may be asking yourself, “Should I buy a Kindle?” Speaking as a long-time ebook publisher and the owner of several earlier ebook reading devices stretching back to the original Rocket eBook and SoftBook, the answer is, “It depends.”

Those who’ve followed ebooks for awhile know exactly what Jeff Bezos meant when, at the introduction of the Kindle on Nov. 19, he said, “If you go back in time, the landscape is littered with the bodies of dead e-book readers.”  I personally own five ebook readers, purchased over a period of years, that qualify in this regard – dedicated ebook reading devices costing $300 to $500 each that, despite their arguable technical merits,never caught on in the marketplace and long ago became orphan products.

I should acknowledge at this point that since I publish my ebooks in Kindle editions, I certainly have a vested interest in your rushing out and buying a Kindle. However, that’s true only if you end up liking your Kindle well enough to use it to buy ebooks instead of leaving it to gather dust on a shelf.  If you buy a Kindle and hate it, you certainly won’t be using it to buy ebooks, mine or anybody else’s!

Beyond that, like most ebook publishers, I release my titles in several different formats so that they’re available for a variety of reading devices in addition to the Kindle, and on your desktop or laptop computer as well, so from that standpoint I really don’t care which way you prefer to read ebooks.

One thing to understand about ebook readers in general, and the Kindle in particular, is that they’re highly specialized devices, unlike, say, a laptop computer or a Tablet PC. So the first answer to “Should I Buy a Kindle?” is “Not if it’s a general-purpose device you’re after.”  More specifically, if you want a device to play MP3 music files, browse the Web, do email, maintain a calendar and address book, do word processing, and work with spreadsheets, you’ll find the Kindle either marginal for these purposes or not able to do them at all.  Certainly, if you want a device to display color images, play Tetris, or watch YouTube videos, the Kindle isn’t for you because it has a a grayscale screen with a very slow refresh rate.

Beyond these technical limitations, there’s the issue of price. If $400 for a specialized device is out of your price range, then the question is readily answered in the negative.

One obvious reason for not buying a Kindle is that it’s gotten some very negative initial reviews in the media.  Surprisingly, it turns out that bad reviews alone aren’t a good reason for not buying a Kindle.  The reason for this is that, emphatic and acerbic as these reviews have sometimes been, by far the majority of actual purchasers report being very happy with their Kindles.

Why would people be so happy with a device with such definite and striking limitations? Probably the answer here it that it didn’t disappoint them because they made their buying decision taking the limitations into full account at the outset.  To Amazon.com’s credit, since the very introduction of the Kindle, their website has given equal prominence to favorable and unfavorable customer reviews, and hasn’t excluded a flood of extremely hostile and negative comments by people who haven’t even seen a Kindle, let alone purchased one.  These negative comments are also factored into the overall product rating as well, which as a result started off at 2.2 out of a possible 5 stars.  As a result, customers wanting to make an informed purchasing decision haven’t had to look far to find plenty of information about potential drawbacks. If you decide to check out the Amazon customer reviews for the Kindle, I suggest sorting them by “newest first” in order to alert yourself immediately to any issues that purchasers are currently reporting. In many cases I’ve also found it helpful to read the comments other customers post in response to a review. They often correct misunderstandings and include helpful suggestions.

One place that’s useful to check for customer reviews but may not be immediately obvious is the MobileRead forums.  Contributors to these forums are primarily long-time ebook enthusiasts, many of whom already own one or more earlier ebook reading devices.  In these online discussions they vigorously debate the merits of current ebook reader models, the Kindle among them.  One encouraging thing in these forums is that few early purchasers report any technical glitches with the Kindle.

Factors that might outweigh criticisms of the Kindle include the following:

• Availability of content – some people report being drawn to the Kindle by the large number of ebooks available for it in Amazon’s Kindle Store.  However, if this aspect appeals to you, be sure to check the prices of ebooks you may be interested in buying first.  Although current bestsellers carry attractive prices, some other popular titles are more expensive.
• Options for large print display – the Kindle offers 6 different font sizes, so you have a good chance that one will provide a suitable balance between readability and the amount of text on a page for your particular eyesight.
• A display that can be read easily in bright sunlight is a plus for some people.
• Wireless convenience – the fact that the Kindle can get a wireless Internet connection anywhere a cell phone can is a major plus for some prospective purchasers.  For example, one person wrote, “I wanted a book at 2 AM and I got it.”  However, be aware that having the wireless connection turned on drains the battery much more rapidly than just using the Kindle for reading.
• Some purchasers report that for them the deciding factor was the 30-day return period.

There are, of course, many reasons for not buying a Kindle as well.  You’ll find plenty of those in the negative comments and reviews, so I’ll only mention a couple of the more thoughtful and less obvious ones.  One or two people have said that buying a Kindle would lead them to spend too much money on ebooks for it.  Others have reported that the Kindle is unsuitable reading for technical books with graphics because text within the graphics is sometimes too small to be readable and there’s no way to enlarge it because the different font sizes only affect text, not images.

Have I myself bought a Kindle yet?  The answer at this point is “No,” price being one of the major reasons. However, there’s no question that the more I’ve read about the Kindle, the more tempted I am to buy one, and I expect that sometime soon I’ll find a way to rationalize the expenditure. Here are a few recent positive comments from the Amazon customer reviews that I’ve personally found persuasive and that weren’t immediately obvious to me from reading the initial reviews:

“Easy to read on a treadmill with larger font sizes, and no need to hold the book open.”

“The best part, by far, are the newspapers and magazines at much cheaper prices than if you subscribed to the paper version. Every morning I wake up and have The Times, The Post, Slate and Salon waiting for me to read. No more advertisements to get past while reading or trying to read on the subway with someone next to you.”

“No more paying excess weight fees on my luggage due to my books. I think that savings alone will pay for my Kindle! I used to have to plan my reading around what I had in hardcover or paperback vs. my travel schedule. No more! I no longer have to worry did I bring enough books, will I be stuck reading something less than desireable from the hotel gift shop etc.”

“. . . having used Kindle during my holiday return flight, it is everything I had hoped it would be and more.”

In “Estate Sale Prospecting,” I report that I had little initial success with books I found at estate sales in Amazon Marketplace. Since then I’ve learned more about how to select and sell antiquarian books there. One thing I’ve learned is that “old” doesn’t equate to “valuable” with books. At an estate sale today I was tempted by a 1920 copy of James Robinson’s “History of Europe: Ancient and Medieval” but, knowing this, I passed it up. However, later on I thought I’d check Amazon.com just in case it was actually worth something. When I saw that there were 7 copies for sale at prices ranging from $12 to $49, I thought I’d made a mistake. Then I checked the sales rank–it was “none”! Evidently, despite the prices, there’s no market at all for this book! That wouldn’t be surprising for books where there are a lot of $0.01 copies. A price of a penny could reflect stiff price competition because of lots of copies on the market, but it could also be the result of sellers gradually lowering their prices trying to find the right price point.

But then I thought, what if Amazon sales ranks only reflect sales directly through Amazon.com itself, and Amazon Marketplace sales aren’t factored in? That would explain why prices could be high even though with no apparent sales.

I know lots has been written about how Amazon.com calculates its sales ranks, but I happened to have sold a 1925 copy of Margaret Kennedy’s “The Constant Nymph” a few days ago. It’s recently been reissued in paperback, but the 1920 hardcover edition is only available through Amazon Marketplace sellers, so I checked to see if the sales rank was “none” despite a known sale. Not so–it was 816,604, unquestionably reflecting my recent sale.

So Amazon Marketplace prices for antiquarian books aren’t necessarily an indication of the market for them. One mystery remains–I’ve found a few listings for antiquarian books that are “currently unavailable” and also have a sale rank of “none.” Some Marketplace seller must have requested the creation of one of these listings because they had a copy to post for sale, and that copy is gone now. Perhaps there’s a sales rank floor below which Amazon reports the sales rank as “none,” or perhaps the seller sold the book through another channel or gave up on it and withdrew the listing.

Recently I was industriously listing a series of eBay items and happened to notice that I’d made a typo in entering the shipping weight for one of them that boosted the shipping charge from $4.50 to $10.40! Naturally I was worried that I might have done the same thing with some of my other items without noticing. I started viewing them one by one in My eBay Selling list, but that’s frustratingly time-consuming if you have a lot of items. The solution? View one item and click on the View Seller’s Other Items link under Meet the Seller block on the right. That produces an abbreviated listing that includes the starting bid and the shipping cost, making it quick and easy to check for errors. Now I’m wondering if some of my items that didn’t sell in the past also had typos in the shipping weight, making them look far more expensive to prospective buyers than I’d intended!

For eBay items you ship by USPS Priority Mail, it’s handy and saves money to use the free, specially marked boxes provided for this purpose by the U.S. Postal Service. You can usually pick up boxes of the most commonly used sizes in the lobby of your local post office, but supplies sometimes run low and not every post office has all the different sizes on hand. If you set up an account on the USPS website, you can order boxes, usually in quantities of 10 or 25, and other postal supplies like Priority Mail stickers for free and have them delivered to you along with your regular mail.

However, as an eBay seller, you can also order free Priority Mail boxes in several other sizes, again in quantities of 10 or 25, labeled with eBay’s name as well as USPS. I find it a little hard to get to this page on eBay, so here are the directions:

(1) Go to your My eBay home page.
(2) Click on the Selling Resources link under Related Links toward the bottom of the page on the left-hand side.
(3) Click on the eBay Shipping Center link under Shipping on the right-hand side.
(4) Click on the USPS Shipping Zone button under Helpful Links on the right-hand side.
(5) Click on the Order Free Shipping Supplies link under Spotlight’s On on the right-hand side.

This will take you to the page where you can place your order for boxes. Keep in mind that whether you order them direct from USPS or through eBay, it will probably take at least a week for them to arrive.

At a camera store today, I noticed a small folding tabletop photography “studio” specifically for photographing eBay items. In fact, there were three different models ranging in price from $70 to $150. Each has a cubical frame with blue fabric covering the bottom and back and white fabric covering the sides and top to form a box. Included are two small AC-powered photographic lights that can be positioned inside the box to illuminate a small subject with direct or reflected light or outside pointed at the walls to illuminate a larger subject with diffuse light. It’s basically a much smaller version of the studio you’ll see in an I Sold It on eBay Store.

I didn’t try it, but I imagine one of these is easy to unfold and set up and to take down and put away. And I’m sure they make it much easier to take high-quality photos of eBay items, so it’s definitely tempting to think of getting one.

On the other hand, how important is the quality of the photograph in selling an eBay item? The quality of the item itself is unquestionably important in determining the final price, but I personally usually judge that more by the description than by how good the photograph. It certainly helps if the photograph shows defects or unusual features of the item, but an ordinary snapshot-type photograph is usually sufficient for this purpose. It just needs to be clear, as opposed to fuzzy or out of focus, and moderately well-illuminated. After all, it’s the item I’m buying, not the photograph. And, of course, the basic eBay photo size is 400 x 400 pixels, so a lovely megapixel image is going to be shrunk anyway.

Bottom line: A magazine-quality photograph doesn’t hurt anything, but it’s not clear to me that an item with one goes for any more money than a similar one with an amateurish photo. If you enjoy having and using one of these tabletop studios, by all means buy one, but don’t consider it an essential investment for successful selling on eBay.

When I posted a question about good books for novices about selling on eBay, Canadian seller lafemme1946 replied as follows:

Because it can take months to bring a book to market, any printed book will be out of date by the time you are able to buy it.

The mantra over on the Canadian sellers’ board is :
Know what you sell, sell what you know.

The mechanics (including current fees) are all available right here.

If you do not know HTML to pretty up your listings you can also pick up the basics here– or buy the Dummies Guide to HTML.

My preferences are to sell internationally,
to put the shipping costs in the terms of description and list them so that they invoice automatically,
to use flat shipping rates,
to buy a postal scale,
never to have the shipping cost higher than my opening bid,
to use only Gallery of all the expensive bells and whistles eBay offers,
and to set my opening price at a number that I will be content with if I have only one bidder.

Oh and use spell check but proofread as well.

Since I’ve been around eBay for 5 years now, I’m beginning to think I should write an e-book and sell it for $9.99 expanding on all these topics since we see this question so often.

I’m indebted to Mike Edelman for pointing out several errors in “Navigating the Open Source Ocean”:

p. 26, paragraph 2, first sentence should read:
. . . acclaimed New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman . . .

p. 28, paragraph 2, first sentence should read;
She points out . . .

p. 56, paragraph 1, first sentence should read:
However, in her forward to Open Sources 2.0 . . .

and second sentence should read:
Instead she sees . . .

 My apologies to Mr. Friedman and Ms. Polese.