Rare Oz Books' Selling Avenues

If you are in a position to sell your rare Oz books, you have multiple channels through which to do that. You can try your local bookstore, craigslist, ebay, auction houses… or I may be interested in buying them from you at a fair price. I will try to outline the pros and cons of each avenue and let you to decide what works best for you.

Bookstores

When you walk into a bookstore to inquire about the value of your rare Oz books, most book dealers will try to identify the book edition, state and printing year if they have a reference book. The store will then may perform an online search of your title on addall.com search engine which covers multiple rare books stores around the world (Abebooks, Biblio, Alibris, Amazon, etc). After determining the overall condition of your book (poor, fair or good), the dealer will try to find the identical book. Upon finding it at a retail price, the store will usually offer you one-third of the lowest priced book because they have to take into account the store-related expenses and uncertainty related to the sale of your book.

Craigslist

If you have a camera and are willing to put up to 4 photos and descriptions, you might try to sell your rare Oz books using craigslist. Pro: if you can find a buyer, he or she might pay retail price for the book. Con: you are limited to buyers only in your local geographic area.

Ebay or other online auction

This option assumes that you have sold something on ebay before, and that you are familiar with the effort involved in listing of rare Oz books. On average, you should expect to spend at least one hour between taking photos and performing research related to placing a book description and actually listing a book. In addition, you should expect to pay various fees that will add up to approximately 15% of your final price.

In addition, you might get inquiries from potential customers asking you about the condition of your vintage book or to place additional photos that can add to your time investment. This approach can work if you have a lot of free time and are familiar with all aspects of ebay. Usually, book dealers are not selling Oz books in very good condition through ebay based on the high demand from existing customers to buy antique books.

Auction Houses

From my past experiences with auction houses, results are often uncertain. Auctioneers are usually not aware of Oz books' proper editions and advertise books as 1st editions due to the fact that most Oz books have only an original copyright year. So I have seen books that usually can be purchased under $50 in bookstores or online, realizing over $500 in auction houses. It should be noted that true First editions Oz books usually do not reach their actual retail values due to the fact that any collector who is willing to make a serious investment in Oz books would prefer to see the book with his or her own eyes before committing to its purchase. Another big factor in auction houses is their charge per transaction. Usually they charge 20% from sellers and an additional 20% from buyers. So if your book sells for $1000, the buyer will end up paying $1200 and you will only receive $800. You can see my point of uncertainty in prices by looking below at two different auction houses' past sales for the same book, where the first auction house realized $24,000 and second realized only $180 for two books, one of them being the title sold for $24,000 in another auction house. Links are below.

What can I offer for your book?

I usually purchase many Frank Baums rare Oz books from people like you and am usually able to offer higher prices than you would find on average anywhere else. How? I have a list of over 400 potential customers that purchased books from me in the past and look for additional titles to upgrade their existing collection. I even send a reminder on a monthly basis to them to check my inventory, which usually results in above average sales.

As a rule, I try to contact a seller by telephone and, within a few minutes, identify what type of a book the seller has. If any books require additional information or research due to their rarity, I go through the next step by identifying edition, presence of required color plates, dust jackets and overall condition. For books that are valued in hundreds of dollars or more, I prefer to get a few photos of rare Oz books in order to get an accurate, overall book condition.

I cannot buy books for the same price I hope to put them up for sale at a later date on my website due to many factors. For example, from my past experiences buying books, I found that I have to spend sufficient time analyzing each book and often prepare it to be in sellable condition. I spend additional time taking extra photos of the book and uploading them to my website. As a result, I have to take into consideration many factors such as book rarity, demand and initial time commitment.

I am spending a lot of time to promote my website in US and internationally. In average I have a visitors from over 30 different countries that interested to learn about Oz books or obtain them.

Based on the latest statistics, my website is visited by over 2400 visitors from US alone on the monthly basis (see stats below by Alexa search engine).

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