One of the things I learned from Walt West, the wonderful owner of Walt West Books, when I worked there was how to classify used books, something that helped me a lot when I bought books customers brought into the store to sell. I, of course, had, given my browsing in used bookshop, a sense before I got a job in a used bookshop, that used books varied by quality. Some were good, some were not as good, and others were not very good at all. Walt taught me that one could and should classify used books as like new or fine, very good or near fine, good or mediocre, acceptable, and, of course, by whether a book was ex-library or not. Walt, if memory serves, never bought ex-library books that had been de-accessioned. or “borrowed”.
For us at Walt West Books a like new or fine book looked like it could have been sitting on the shelves of a new bookshop. It had no underlining, little if any damage to the cover, and little if any damage to the pages of the book. A vey good or near fine used book was not underlined, did not have spine damage, and had minimal damage to the cover and the pages of a book. A good book had underling and noticeable damage to the spine and cover of the book. An acceptable book had extensive underling and extensive damage to the cover, spine, and pages of the book. The spine of the book, for example, was cracked, the cover exhibited several bumps and cracks, and the pages had extensive foxing, An ex-lib book, which we did not buy because it had stamps, pockets or check out lists, and labels, could not, as a consequence, rise above the good category because of those stamps, pockets, and labels.
There are in the current used bookshop marketplace, whether brick and mortar, or online, a great variation in how bookshops categorise books. The categories remain the same as those Walt taught me thanks to mass sellers like Amazon, which has a marketplace which allows anyone, if they meet certain criteria, to sell items including books. Amazon classifies books into like new, very good, good, and acceptable categoris. It does not, and this is an unending problem when buying books on Amazon, have an ex-lib category though quality booksellers on Amazon note this in the description of the books they have for sale. Non-quality booksellers on Amazon don’t always note that a book is ex-lib and don’t often note anything about the book in the description field. Welcome to the wacky upside down world of used bookselling online.
Among the best used book sellers on line are long-existing brick and mortar stores. When you buy a used book from Midtown Scholar of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for example, you know that you are getting a like new book, a very good book, a good book, and an acceptable book whether you buy from them via Amazon or from their online store.
When you buy from other used booksellers online, a situation in which you as a buyer are dependent on accurate description, you don’t always know what you are getting. Take Thriftbooks which bills itself as the largest online bookstore, for example. I have bought used books from Thriftbook for years and I still have no clear idea of the condition of the book that I am buying from them until the book physically arrives. Sometimes a Thriftbook like new book is like new. At other times it isn’t even very good. Sometimes a good book is very good at other times it is acceptable. Sometimes an ex-lib book is listed as ex-lib sometimes it is not and sometimes an ex-lib listed or not listed is classified as like new or very good, something that boggles my mind. When you buy from Thriftbooks, in other words, it is like playing Russian roulette.
I hope it does not seem like I am overly picking on Thriftbooks. I am focusing on it because I buy regularly from them because their books are cheap. The are the online equivalent of Goodwill or Deseret Industries the difference between them and Thriftbook being that you cannot see and touch the book you are buying from Thriftbooks. I also know that Thriftbooks is not the worst offender online—I have had experiences with others that are unbelievably bad, and that they have gotten better over the years in terms of book classifications. They still have a way to go, however.
For example, just today I received a book from Thriftbooks that was described as very good. I don’t know what Thriftbooks means by very good if it is a book, like the book I received today, God’s Schools, it means a book that is highlighted throughout, has a soiled cover, has a 2 cm gash where the cover meets the spine, and has several bumps on the cover and on the pages of the book. This state of book affairs is not very good by any objective let alone by a quality subjective measure. What this classification of the book shows is a lack of quality workmanship by some Thriftbook employee. It shows a Thriftbook employee who isn’t paying attention or who doesn’t care perhaps because he or she isn’t paid a living wage like I was when I worked at a used bookshop. Ain’t that, one might argue, service sector America.
One thing you quickly learn from buying books online is that there are some booksellers who hue closely to the same used book classification taxonomy as Walt West did. Others are much less analytical and consistent in their classifications of used books. It almost seems that these less than quality booksellers are not cognisant of used book categories, are lazy when they classify books according to the dominant taxonomy, don’t care enough to categorise books accurately, are letting their own used book categories grounded in their own ideologies of what a used book category should be, or all or many of the above. Regardless, it makes one wary of buying used books from certain sellers in an age where reality often seems bent to the will of those doing the classifying and selling. I guess one could say that such booksellers are the snake oil salespeople of the brave new digital world.
Addendum: For those able to read between the lines of this essay it should be clear that I love books and that my life, including my life in academia, has been grounded on a love for books, a love for books that drew me to libraries, library work, bookshops, and bookshop work. A love of books, by the way, is not necessarily congruent with a life in academia, something I learned particularly in my graduate school years, just one of the things that cured my romantic outlook about academe.
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