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Second of a series on the various bookselling services. I was hired as a consultant by Bookquest which was sponsored by a company called Faxon. At that time I was a partner with Taylor Bowie in a bookstore in Pioneer Square in Seattle and had been writing articles and giving seminars on the use of computers in the used book business for some years. Not too long after this Faxon dissolved and shut down Bookquest. There were 125 dealers involved at that time and a number of the

Booksellers are in an enviable position among retailers of rarities on the Web. For decades and even centuries, the book business has commonly been carried on by remote, through the catalogues of dealers and auction houses, by mail and by telephone, and through advertisements in trade journals. There is also a general consensus on description standards, however widely these may vary in practice. In marked contrast to dealers in paintings or porcelain, booksellers have long-he

Table of Contents From the President Bibliography for Beginners: Part 1 References An Online-Auction Primer for Booksellers A Founder’s View – A Personal Opinion Bookselling on the Internet A Conversation with Advance Book Exchange (ABE) Committee Reports

The Way I See It “Freedom is just another word for nothin’ left to lose…” -Janis Joplin All right, I admit it. As an independent bookseller in today’s marketplace, sometimes I wonder how much more I can lose. Being self-employed seems to mean paying my own way — and everyone else’s, too. We all have moments like this, when the downside of life looks bigger than the upside. But, Janis Joplin obviously never ran with my crowd. To the independent booksellers I know, “freedom” me

Bibliography is the study of books as material objects. One father of modern bibliography, Sir Walter Greg, referred to it further as “the science of transmission of literary documents. As booksellers, bibliography takes on other aspects, including the description of condition. Bibliographies, or, more properly, books which are bibliographical, fall into five general categories: i) enumerative the simple list. Included are checklists by author, geographical region, publisher,

Part One: Selling All thats required is a connection to the Internet and a digital camera or scanner. The process of putting auctions on the web is very simple, taking a little extra time owing to photo preparation but otherwise quite comparable to the task of book input for databases such as ABE. Online auction descriptions generally consist of three parts: the all-important photo, the headline and the description. You could list your auctions online without photos, but pric

Getting my vision of IOBA off the ground has been a long, arduous, and sometimes painful project. I had a vision but did not have the necessary skills and knowledge to handle all of the technical aspects. I feel being the messenger has been the most challenging thing I have ever done. Stepping back and letting others develop IOBA, each with our own strong opinions, coming to realize that we all had to compromise on different issues, has been challenging for all of us. Now tha

After having been in the book business for nearly 40 years and having written for years about book collecting, this is the first time we have been asked to write something that is just for dealers. It is our pleasure to do this for IOBA members. We realize there are many members of varying levels of experience in our association, but this is tailored for the new dealer who is looking for some guidance in how to set up and run a successful on-line book business. Over time, we