How to Search for Books on the Web

You know how to do it? Fine. In that case continue searching without reading further.

But this article was triggered by Barbara Himes of Slightly Read Books in Iowa (http://www.slightlyreadbooks.com), who has considerable experience in this field, and when I read one of her recent postings on BookFinder’s Insider forum, I was surprised to see indications that her searching was not optimum.

The book she was checking out was French Quarter Royalty by John DeMers. (Why she was researching this particular book is not the concern of this article—drop a line to Barbara and she’ll tell you!)

Nothing wrong with her search, insofar as it got there, but there are a number of ways it could be improved and that will be the focus of this article.

Most booksellers often have to carry out hundreds of searches each day. Checking out the going rate for new stock, getting ball park figures for forthcoming auctions to guide bidding limits, finding information for customers—there can be myriad reasons for these searches.

So anything that can save a few seconds here or there is going to be of great value when it is multiplied by hundreds of searches, especially if it will also tend to enhance the accuracy of the search or the quality of the information.

Here are the rules:

1, 2 & 3. Minimize, minimize, minimize.

Put the least possible amount of information into the search panels. The less you put in, the more complete the results will be. If your first try brings up too many results, press the “back” button on your browser and add a little more until you have refined the search to exactly the information you seek. Your first try will not be wasted—it will give you a broad view of the overall availability which can be helpful when you get down to specifics.

To use Barbara’s example, if you put “demers” into the author panel and “quarter” into the title panel you will get EXACTLY the same results as if you had typed “John DeMers” and “French Quarter Royal,” but with much less time and effort. Had one of the listers of this book accidentally typo’d, for example, “Royatly” instead of “Royalty,” you will get even better results because your minimization would not have excluded them.

In passing, please note that “the” “and” “of” “in” etc. are a total waste of time. Many search programs do not even recognize them and they will add nothing useful to your search. Also note that the search panels are not case sensitive, so it is unnecessary to use capitals.

As you hone your skills, you will learn to pick out the parts of the author and/or title that will get you to where you want to be fastest.

For example, if you wish to research Wilbur Smith’s When the Lion Feeds, “wilbur” in the author panel and “lion” (or “feed,” noting that plurals are disregarded, so you don’t have to type “feeds”) in the title panel gets you there, with no need for more. But if you choose “smith” rather than “Wilbur,” all sorts of unwanted selections appear. You learn to hate the Smiths, Browns, Thompsons and Joneses of this world and love the Dalvimarts, Blishens and Stredders, etc., for they make your job really easy.

4. Choose the right search site for your purposes.

AddAll and BookFinder are superb for comprehensive searches, but because they are searching so many databases, they take significantly longer than single database sites. That’s OK if you are doing only a few searches, but if you are doing greater quantities it can add hours to your day.

There are a number of very good sites, but currently the best for speed of search, quality of search facilities and comprehensiveness of listings is probably ABE.

Always use the Advanced Search facility, for although the Quick Search will often get you there, you will frequently need some of the advanced options for the final refinement.

5. Refining the search.

Most searches don’t need it, but when they do, knowing how to handle the controls of the Advanced Search is helpful.

NEVER, unless all else has failed, tick the “First Edition” “Signed” or “Dust Jacket” boxes—they will only mislead you by excluding listings that are useful. Such refinements are only as good as the listings submitted and they tend to be all over the place. So “Inscribed by previous owner” appears under “Signed,” “First Edition, 5^th Impression” (i.e., an entry from a bookseller you don’t even want to know about!) appears under “First Edition,” and many books with wrappers don’t appear at all because the bookseller did not have the right software to make it so.

You will get there more simply and accurately by sorting your results “Highest Price” downwards—as the genuine signed copies will appear at the top, and so on.

Nor are the ISBN or price fields much use, except as a last resort.

After, obviously, the “Author” “Title” and “Publisher” fields, the most useful fields are the wonderful “Published Date” fields. Skilled use of those fields, usually by setting either a maximum or minimum date (but not both, unless you really have to) will sort out 95% of the more difficult searches.

The “Keywords” field can also be useful, but use it sparingly, for it is another field dependent upon the quality of input, and can needlessly limit the quality of the results.

6. Interpreting the results.

This is where the real skill comes in, because nowadays most searches will produce a wild range of prices. This is because the inexpensive entry into web bookselling has led to thousands of “booksellers” with very little knowledge, so they just copy what they see, irrespective of the merit or salability of the book. Most will be going nowhere, but it will take them a few years to find this out, and meantime they will be replaced by thousands of other hopefuls. If you add relisters, megalisters, PoDs and various “get rich quick” chancers, the scope for misleading prices appearing is enormous.

So, as a general rule, discount the lower end of the prices displayed. Such sellers will have a very broad view of what the terms “Very Good” and “Fine” mean and there is a good chance that their offerings will not be the bargains that they seem. Similarly, discount the top end of the prices displayed, especially if there is a big jump between the mainstream price and the high price—they will almost definitely be relisters or chancers. (Occasionally, it will be a genuine bookseller who has made a mistake but you don’t need to heed that price either.)

Once you have got to the middle ground where the genuine market value seems to be, if the book you are evaluating merits it, check out a few of the specific listings. The wording of the book description will, with practice, tell you reams about the knowledge and professionalism of the seller and therefore how much confidence you can place on the pricing. It can also be illuminating to click onto the bookseller’s details—proper contact address and phone number, how many books listed, own website, individual descriptions rather than boilerplate—all these things can help you gauge how much notice you should take of the listing.

So what happens if your search produces no worthwhile results? That is not really our purpose here, as “Advanced Booksearching” is worthy of a separate article. If you get zero results even from an AddAll or BookFinder search, your first reaction should be, “Have I made some sort of typo?” Have I typed in “Forrester” instead of “Forester,” or “Hobitt” instead of “Hobbit?” Only after making sure that your minimized search terms are correct should you think of delving deeper. And only then if your experience tells you that the book you are researching merits the effort.

If the book you are researching has not shown up on any of the searches, that establishes that it is genuinely scarce. (Or even rare—a commonly misused word!) You now need to establish whether or not that matters, as there are many books that are scarce but of no financial consequence. For this you need to ask questions. Is the book old enough? Does it seem to have intrinsic merit (interesting subject, author, illustrations, etc.)?

If the answer is yes, then by all means move on to Google, Books in Print, library records, auction records, etc. But most times it will be quicker just to take a guess and establish a sensible price for the scarce book or ephemera that you have before you. At Barter Books we have a principle called the “might as well not sell at price.” A classic example is a book titled A Study of Sheep Scab in the Outer Hebrides in 1922. Anyone who did not want the book (i.e., 99.9% of the population) would not give you 10c for it. But anyone who did want the book will pay, within reason, whatever you ask. (As, indeed, happened—the book was sold for £36.) You may very well sell no more than two or three out of every ten “might as well not sell at” books, but they will more than cover the effort and raise considerably more turnover and profit than if you had priced all ten of these books very low.

Have I been teaching Grandma to suck eggs? I hope not, but if I have, I did warn you in my very first sentence!

Stuart Manley is the co-owner of Barter Books in Alnwick Station, Northumberland, England and can be contacted at http://www.barterbooks.co.uk.