The Means of Book Trading That Dares Not Speak Its Name: eBay

Dealer Y: “I do agree that eBay is having the unfortunate effect of cutting out or at least minimizing the role of the book scout. This is because eBay is a 24 hour book fair and venue for finding material and dealers and end users to sell to. Now, the low-end and the high-end dealers can deal with each other, cutting out the book scout as middleman. But at the same time eBay has done a tremendous amount towards democratizing the market. It has changed the way mom-and-pop businesses operate, giving them access to clients and buyers they would have never been able to reach before.”

Dealer Y: “I think that one of the really great things about eBay is how egalitarian it is. The high-end dealers cultivate an air of exclusivity. eBay provides in a way a perfect market economy, breaking down distinctions of race, class, gender, age, etc. With eBay all you have is a relationship between abstract buyers and sellers. This approach is of course an anathema to the great high-end dealers, who cultivate elitism. Book dealers have historically depended on market inefficiency, on the fact that not everybody shares the same information about a book and its scarcity and worth. Most sellers of rare books assume that they know more than you do about a book. eBay’s effect on the market is that eBay has equalized rare book values and given everyone an ability to test the waters in the rare books market.”

Dealer Y: “I do think that there’s a sort of stigma in the rare book world, particularly in the high-end rare book world, about using eBay, possibly because eBay uniformly sells goods at below retail value. Some, perhaps many, high-end dealers of books, antiques, and other goods appear to view using eBay as akin to buying and selling your goods at a flea market or bazaar. Which is to say it’s seen as déclassé. These are probably the same dealers who are reticent to appear at any local book fair, even the ABAA sponsored ones. A dealer of a certain stature just doesn’t want to be seen doing this, mixing in with the riff-raff.”

Dealer Y: “As eBay’s profile increases and more dealers begin to use it I predict that we are actually going to see it become a less effective tool over time. Contrary to early dire predictions, eBay is driving up values and not decreasing them as more and more dealers use eBay. The result has been that prices have universally though gradually risen and not dropped with this dealer intervention. I think it will continue in this direction.”

Conclusion:
As any remotely attentive reader knows by now, this author went into this article having not really tested the eBay waters and with an open mind and with no substantive knowledge of eBay with the exception of one or two fumbling experiments with it, each of which transpired many years ago. I have come away from my research considerably wiser but also considerably more hardened and more jaded, both about eBay and about the book selling world in general.

Rare Book Monthly

The Means of Book Trading That Dares Not Speak Its Name: eBay

Rare Book Monthly

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The Means of Book Trading That Dares Not Speak Its Name: eBay

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