It was sometime back in the late 1980s. We were at a MARIAB meeting (the acronym, I think, for “Massachusetts and Rhode Island Antiquarian Booksellers.” Rather awkward, yes, but less so than its successor SNEAB – Southern New England Antiquarian Booksellers – mention of which often invokes a “God Bless You!” response) being held, as I recall, at the offices of Anne Marie Wall and Jim Hinck, booksellers who were at that time set up in Newport, RI. That ancient confab sticks in my memory because of the lengthy and passionate debate I had with Jim about the merits of Apple computers vs. PCs. This was back in the day, remember, when people at social gatherings discussed the relative merits of woodstoves and computers and our kids listened to songs by The Police. I had recently been seduced by a Killer App called Hypercard, particular to the Apple platform, which was going to solve the problems of the world, and out of which I was struggling to produce my own nifty relational database. Jim, representing the calm, dispassionate voice of reason, made the case that PCs were easier. And cheaper.
Now, here we are, decades later. I purchase reconditioned ThinkBook PC laptops from Newegg for a few hundred bucks apiece and Jim manages vialibri.net, a website that aggregates sales offerings from bookselling websites around the world. Vialibri.net has become an industry standard replacing, in large measure, older sites like Bookfinder and Addall.
I use vialibri.net every day. Not just to find books or to see how other dealers are pricing them, but as a composition aid – a reliable source from which to cut and paste lengthy titles, subtitles, and quotations from known sources (never descriptions!) rather than type them in by hand. But perhaps the best use of vialibri.net is in response to the crummy-book-collection query. We all get them. Big companies field many a day. I get one every week or so, and it’s always one too many.
They come from widows of the “impecunious collector” (abominable phrase!) or from the collector himself who has finally wised up and decided to cash in his collection of yard sale tomes in order to start collecting Trump for President merch. These accumulators rarely have a list of their accumulations, but are happy to send sloppy cellphone photos of heaps of books. I don’t know why I always send a written response – maybe because I feel sorry for widows and their dopey husbands – but I do.
Then, just last week, as I was writing my umpteenth such letter, I had a brainstorm. I turned my oft-repeated response into a form letter. Now all I have to do is open a file, type in the particulars, and hit “Send.” Here’s the letter:
Dear [Widow or Widow’s Husband]:
Thank you for taking the time to send the images.
The books in the images you sent are excellent ones. For the most part they are still reliable sources and they retain their intellectual value. Many of them hold places on the shelves of my reference library.
Unfortunately, the rise of the internet has destroyed their monetary value. Books that were once thought to be scarce now appear by the dozens on internet selling sites. This overabundance naturally drives prices down until, in the competitive market a “race to the bottom” prevails. There are still greedy dealers who will put high prices on such books, hoping to snare customers with more money than brains. While this doesn’t alter the fact that the lower priced book will sell sooner than the high priced copy, it creates a chaotic marketplace.
Just as a random example, let’s consider the book pictured near the top of your first image, [hack author’s name] excellent [“Title of hack author’s book.”]
At present, there are [number of copies… must be in double or triple digits] copies for sale in internet sites at prices ranging from [absurdly low $ figure to ridiculously high].
You can play this game yourself by going to vialibri.net and typing in title, author, and date of the book you are looking for. This is the largest and most reliable internet aggregator of used book values. They list millions of offerings from over 170 websites (including my own) around the world. Please bear in mind that the books listed on this site are books that HAVE NOT SOLD AT THE ASKING PRICE. If they had sold, they would no longer be listed…
So, the long and the short of it is, you have a collection of good, solid maritime books that would be very difficult to sell. For this reason, you won’t find anyone willing to pay much, and you’ll be lucky to find anyone to purchase the lot at a “just take them away” price.
Good luck and best wishes,
Greg Gibson
(Feel free to cut and paste…)
May we plagiarize your letter?