Rare Book Monthly
Articles - February - 2004 Issue
Using the Internet As A Tool
All kinds of ephemera can how up inside an old book
We also came across an old steamship brochure for the Dollar Luxury Ocean Liner, which has long since been sold as scrap. Money has appeared as well, including a 1949 Chinese note. One book even had several unused restaurant and movie theatre gift certificates! The most common item we find though, at least in modern editions, are airline ticket stubs from those who bought a book likely while at the airport, so they could be absorbed in reading for several hours while in flight.
As a selling tool, the Internet has allowed booksellers online to have far reaching access to customers globally. Typically, about thirty percent of our sales are from international buyers. As a result, our focus on acquiring books takes into account those that we may not have otherwise considered. The methods are readily available to accept online payment either through Amazon, PayPal, credit card processing services, or other secure third party avenues. It only involves a little extra time in standing in line at the post office to have international payments processed. For most of our domestic books sold, we use an online postal service, which allows printing of postage and includes delivery confirmation and tracking, so we just drop our packages off at the post office without waiting. We find this saves us a great deal of time, as we ship packages on a daily basis.
Many booksellers choose to specialize within a niche or genre of books in which they have a personal interest, while others have a wider focus. Ours is naturally Texas history, as well as a lot of other categories. On certain occasions, we will travel to book sales out of state. How could we forget waiting in line for a Phoenix book sale for two hours, and rushing in to see shopping carts being filled to capacity in minutes by the frenzied masses? A useful website for these sales is www.Booksalefinder.com. For our needs, we find that our local market provides more than enough supply to provide us with a wide selection of inventory.
