Where to sell your home library. About company. Strange book lovers from Parnassus

Offers To you cooperation.

We will help you to put things in order on the bookshelves, and get a decent payment for your books.

We will purchase books, coins, bonds, as well as busts and figurines.

FROM ANY CITIES OF RUSSIA.

Consider any of your suggestions regarding books... The years of publication and the degree of preservation are not decisive factors for us.

Our contacts:

Sell ​​books

To sell books, write only to the Kniganik mail - [email protected] site.

Calls and other requests will not be processed.

You can send a photo of a book or shelves or send a list of available books.

If you have any questions about where to sell books, to whom to sell books, or are looking for an offer to buy books, then you have come to the right place.

You can offer us any of your books. We will consider any of your suggestions. In any corner of Russia and the world. We can be interested in any books (on the design and / or content of the book in any state). First of all - in Russian, less books in English and French, Latin, as well as multilingual editions.

Please indicate your price expectations at the very beginning of negotiations, in order to avoid wasting time.

Our contact details are presented below. You can contact us in any way convenient for you.

Skype: muskitty1

Email: [email protected] site

We will consider any suggestions related to books (excluding detective stories),

We are NOT interested in coins and vouchers (paper money) after 1925. (with the exception of modern coins of Russia and the complete collection of jubilee rubles of the USSR),

Consider any suggestions related to busts and statues.

Questions and answers related to the evaluation and acceptance of books.

Why is it worth selling books to us?

Nowadays, selling books, especially in the provinces, has become quite problematic. The ratio of sellers to buyers today is about 40 to 1. Thus, for 40 book offers, there is only one buyer. On average, a book on the market is sold in about 3-4 months. The general trend of the book market: the demand for book products is steadily falling, e-books are replacing pockets over time.

Selling books to an online store , You are getting:

An objective assessment of the publication,

Additional information about the edition,

Possibility of free evaluation of the entire collection,

Cash payment for books, regardless of subsequent sales.

Guarantees and security

We send our goods by mail without prepayment (except for collections over 10 vt.)

We are a registered Individual Entrepreneur, you can see detailed information in the USRIP (Unified State Register of Individual Entrepreneurs),

We have a Webmoney system seller's certificate, we can accept payments automatically,

We are a verified member of the Yandex-money system,

We provide discounts to regular customers and users of other online stores,

The return of goods of proper (and inadequate) quality is carried out in full accordance with the legislation of the Russian Federation.

You can read reviews about our work and products in the appropriate column (discussion) in the products you are interested in.

How to describe the state of the book?

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

We can also request photographs of books in the course of correspondence. Please send photos in advance in case of an offer of pre-revolutionary books and coins.

As shortcomings, it is necessary to indicate: the absence of title and other sheets, abrasions, the presence of restorations, the presence of donation inscriptions, bold underlining in the text, library seals. (According to the accepted rating system, a book can be "excellent" even with stamps, but their presence must be indicated.), Library pockets, store marks - price, inventory number, barcode sticker, etc. breaks in the binding, tarnished gilding, if any, loss of dust jacket, cases, etc.

Which books are antique?

In our understanding, antiquarian books are books published before 1918. By old we also mean antique books.

Factors that also affect the book rating system:

* the older the book, the more expensive it is

* history of the book - destroyed circulation, illustrations by the artist

* the main role is played by demand (which, often, but not always, depends on the circulation of the publication)

What factors make books cheaper?

* most religious books after the 17th century

* books published by A.F. Marx (majority)

* publications printed on low-quality paper

* books with stamps and seals

* posthumous editions

* books in foreign languages

* books that do not have dust covers, ribbons, cases and other components

* large-circulation books (True, CL 1970-80s)

How can the books be delivered?

The method of delivery and payment is selected individually.

A personal meeting is possible when buying a significant amount or when buying a large number of books. In this case, the meeting is possible in your city, but within the European part of Russia.

In all other situations, buying and selling is carried out using postal or courier delivery. This method is the most reliable and safe for both the seller and the buyer.

Do you accept books with stamps, seals, pockets, inventory numbers?

Yes, we do, but a book with seals is cheaper.

How do I evaluate a book myself? How to evaluate an old antique book yourself?

Book trade, especially second-hand books and antiques, is a unique phenomenon of the pure market. The basic law here is the law of supply and demand, it is he who determines the price of the book at a given moment in time. Therefore, the price bracket - the difference in price between offers, averages from 2-3 to 20-40 times. Just think: the price difference for the same edition can fluctuate up to 40 times, the same book in different stores, all other things being equal, can be 40 times more expensive! The liquidity of a second-hand edition depends, first of all, on the circulation and offers, and, secondly, on the current and general demand (how many people are willing to buy and are looking for a book at the moment). So, if the first edition of Eugene Onegin is of great interest to collectors who are ready to give several hundred thousand rubles for the coveted book, then ordinary citizens are unlikely to be ready to give even fifty. Therefore, if you want to evaluate the book yourself, then you should focus on the following factors:

How many people are currently looking for a book,

An important factor in self-assessment of a book is the condition

The average time to sell a book is one to four months.

Typically, the most valuable publications are:

The first editions of the classics,

Lifetime editions of the classics,

Autographed books

Small circulation, but in demand publications,

Richly illustrated editions printed on good paper, hardcover,

The first editions of well-known series (LP, ZhZL, Frames and others)

Books published before 1800

Books in Russian are more expensive than foreign language editions,

As a rule, large-circulation editions of Marx and religious publications after 1850 are distinguished by low prices.

The relatively low price of the classics of socialist realism, Marxism-Leninism (Lenin, Stalin, Fadeev, Sholokhov, Gorky, etc.). This does not apply to the first editions and editions of the pre-revolutionary period.

The books of repressed authors (L. Trotsky, others), destroyed editions (for example, volume 6 of the Complete Works of Pushkin Brockhaus and Efron, the first and destroyed edition of Solzhenitsyn, Viktor Nekrasov), etc., have a high price.

Do you accept books for commission?

We buy your books and pay for them IMMEDIATELY. Under a commission agreement, we can only accept books of our own composition and especially valuable coins and bonds, which we can also redeem with a one-time payment.

What is a dust jacket and how does it affect book ratings?

A dust jacket (so, supopbl, super, super) is an additional, usually removable part of the book. Simply put: a dust jacket is the “clothing” of a book that is put on the main cover. Most often, dust jackets are made of paper of increased density. The presence of a dust jacket increases the value of the publication (of course, if it came out in super). In some editions, the presence of a dust jacket increases the price more, for example, in Shakespeare in 8 volumes, the BVL series and the Library of Classical Literature, and in many literary monuments.

Questions related to the evaluation of the book.

In this part we will try to explain to you the pricing of second-hand books and antiques.

The article begins with frequently asked questions.

You can read the formation of the price of the book below.

- I found exactly the same edition as mine in the online store. In this store, it costs 500,000 rubles. Will you buy my publication for 450,000 rubles?

- Most likely, no.

Anyone who wants to sell (or buy) a book on the Internet, anyone can see a huge number of offers of a wide variety of books, of a wide variety of price categories. The most popular offers tend to come from large online retailers, which undoubtedly make huge profits and commissions from book sales.

Most of the online stores do not actually own the books on display. As a rule, they post photographs, information and descriptions of books that are sold in second-hand bookshops and antique dealerships in Moscow and St. Petersburg. At the same time, of course, online stores add their markup to the price. As a rule, the price of the book ends up TEN times greater than real market value.

You can look at the Ozon affiliate program (in the part for those who want to sell books). It is displayed for everyone to see, and anyone (an individual entrepreneur or a legal entity) can become a partner of Ozon.ru and supply books under a commission agreement (i.e., pay-as-you-go). With the income of the supplier of books Ozone is only 1/3 of the price of the publication. Is this fair? By and large, selling most of the publications that Ozone is ready to buy is quite problematic for a private trader. In addition, huge funds are spent on the maintenance of such a portal - hosting, promotion, logistics, salaries for the support service, system administrators, http-programmers, etc. It seems to us that it is quite fair.

You should not be guided by the websites of expensive antique shops in Moscow and St. Petersburg, which are located in the center and have a huge client base. The buyers of these salons, as a rule, are wealthy people who buy books as a gift for a high-ranking official, or do not consider their last money when collecting a library. The books that they (the salons) exhibit, as a rule, are in excellent, very good condition, have undergone pre-sale preparation (for example, fastening the block if it was wobbly; cleaning the binding, etc.), often in expensive custom-made bindings made of natural leather, etc. Their price includes (in addition to the actual markup), costs of restoration, costs of maintaining a store, renting premises, taxes, utilities, salaries, etc. Most of the books are books handed over to a commission by professional second-hand booksellers, who bought them at a price that is many times different from the price at which the store exposes them. In conclusion, we can draw the following conclusion: the book, passed from the first seller (owner) to the buyer, passed through the hands of several owners before being sold for the maximum amount. As a result, each of the owners receives only a certain percentage of the final amount.

As a rule, people who want to sell their library do not have a customer base and a wealthy clientele, therefore, focusing on the price of similar offers from salons and large stores is not always the right step.

In addition to expensive salons and shops of exclusive books, on simple sites and forums of second-hand booksellers, the price of similar lots can differ hundreds of times.

Basically, the price fork for a book can be split into two parts:

1) objective factors - the condition of the book, the presence or absence of an autograph, dust jacket, stamp, etc.

2) subjective factors - direct buyer-seller relationship, level of knowledge, willingness of one to sell and another to buy a book for a certain amount.

Most importantly, the prices that can be seen at the moment are THESE ARE THE PRICES AT WHICH THE BOOK CANNOT FIND ITS BUYER AT THE MOMENT... All the really lucrative offers for good books are quickly acquired and cannot be found in the open permanent sale.

When selling antique and second-hand books, you should pay attention to the condition and completeness (especially with regard to antiques, since the incompleteness greatly reduces the cost of the book). The description and status criteria are given below again:

1. Ideal - The book has not been opened, the publication does not have any defects and damages, including printing, as well as store seals, stamps, price indicators. (for example, stamps of the Ozone store). The presence of these features must be reported.

2. Excellent (the book is from a store) - The book does not have the characteristic crunch of the binding, the book was opened.

3. Very good - The book has small flaws that can only be noticed upon close examination (slight abrasions, underlining of lines with a pencil, other flaws that a collector will pay attention to).

4. Good - The book was used, scuffs, small spots are possible.

5. Satisfactory - Severe abrasions, glued sheets, loss of spines, endpapers or individual pages, as well as glued pages, etc.)

6. Bad - The book has major flaws.

An issue related to incompleteness.

- I have one volume from a five-volume edition, and I want to sell the book. A similar edition is bought for 5,000 rubles. If I have one volume, then it costs 1,000 rubles?

Assessing individual volumes is difficult. Most of the expensive antiques in incomplete condition are rarely of interest to collectors, because,

It is extremely difficult to collect expensive and small-circulation publications in separate volumes,

Often, this venture is more expensive,

Finding a missing volume in a collection is usually a costly, time-consuming, and sometimes ineffective process.

The price of the kit is ALWAYS significantly higher than the cost of its individual components. Sometimes this gap is so radical, to get an idea of ​​the price of a single volume

At all times, the possession of one's own home library was considered a sign of education. The volume of the library and the quality of the books that filled it, judged the degree of erudition of a person.

Smart people were called "well-read", i.e. who have read many books, who have learned their knowledge from them. People of the older generation remember how hard it was for them to get rare copies, what queues they had to stand behind them, how long they had to wait for subscription editions. The library in the cramped "Khrushchev" occupied precious meters of living space, and yet many multiplied and multiplied the volume of cabinets, shelves, shelves.

Today, attitudes towards home libraries have changed somewhat. Today, for many, the words "home library" are associated with another element of luxury that can be used to decorate their own home. The overwhelming majority of Internet sites will offer you to make, equip, install exclusive furniture for your library upon request "home library". Those. we will focus on cabinets and shelves. Books are apparently a secondary issue.

In this connection, I recall a case from my life: the guests asked one owner of a respectable home book depository how he gets to the upper shelves, how does he take books from them for reading? "I take it out very simply - with a vacuum cleaner!" Was the answer that completely eliminated the need for follow-up questions. In some specialized stores today you can even buy fake book spines, with which you can create the illusion of a large volume and solidity of the library.

What happened? What is the reason for the change? Why did the most reading nation on the planet stop reading? The main change, perhaps, has taken place in the field of the emergence and distribution of "non-book", non-print media. If earlier erudite people were called well-read, then today they, most likely, should be called "seen". Today, the average Russian spends up to 30 hours a week in front of the TV, 10 hours a week in front of a computer monitor, while at best 5 hours reading (let's not go into details of what he reads!). Remember what you could watch on TV in Soviet times? Two programs, several films. Newspapers and magazines also worked in the ideological field. No one dreamed of such wonders as the Internet! For those seeking knowledge, only books remained. And although some books were in short supply, nevertheless a book could be possessed: it could be re-read, passed on to a friend or borrowed from him for a while, you could retype its especially valuable parts on a typewriter, etc. Then the books were of real value; and this value for some publications was due to their small print runs. Happy owners of rare books rightfully considered themselves rich people.

What can I say to this? Maybe books, as a form of transmission of thought, are hopelessly outdated today and should soon disappear altogether? How did such methods of transmitting information as nodular writing or cuneiform writing on raw clay once disappear? Perhaps the age of the book is coming to an end and there is no need to be pointlessly nostalgic? Are libraries really nothing more than cabinets and shelves?

How to build a home library?

For those who nevertheless believe that books cannot be completely replaced by TV, the Internet and electronic books, we suggest thinking about creating your own home library. It should be said that this business will immediately challenge the daily routine imposed on us by the present: if you do not want to build a fake library, but want to really be well-read, you will have to "snatch" a dozen precious watches from the TV!

What literature to collect? We would venture to suggest such a system.

Reference literature, technical, necessary for work or study. Naturally, such literature must be bought, collected, collected. If you are doing, for example, programming, then the literature in this direction will certainly come in handy for you.

General developmental literature. Everyone has their own preferences in everything. When choosing general developmental literature, you should also be guided by your own interests: if you are a "techie", it may be interesting to collect a collection of books on the history of mechanics, electronics, etc. Someone likes history, someone likes astronomy, someone is interested in questions of philosophy and religion. Today there are many interesting books on construction and repair, on the arrangement and decoration of your home; a whole section can be devoted to them, too. All of these directions can dictate which books to look for and collect.

Fiction literature. Don't forget the classics! No matter how trite it may sound, every home library should have at least a few works by one author from Russian and foreign classics.

When creating a home library, you need to be guided by several principles.

Pulp fiction and beach fiction should not be checked into the library. it is of no value and there is no need to collect it. These books are only meant to pass the time.

Good literature can be purchased at bookstores, by ad. Whole private libraries can be bought at a very low cost. Used books often cost much less than new ones, not inferior to new ones in binding and paper quality.

Selections of magazines can take a worthy place in the home library. It is quite possible to include collections of magazines "Around the World", "Biography", "Discovery", "Science and Technology", etc. in the section of general education books. Magazine selections can also be purchased from collectors at sales.

When building a library, do not forget about your children. Buy literature that is interesting for them too. Instill in them an interest in reading adventure novels by Fenimore Cooper, Jules Verne, Mine Reed.

Remember, having a library isn't cheap. Buying books, building library furniture, caring for books, transporting when moving - all this requires money and effort. Don't set yourself the goal of building a large library. Build a library of books that are valuable to you.

For the convenience of classification, use special computer programs. They will help to arrange all the books into sections, remind you of whom you gave to read this or that book.

Look for like-minded book lovers. This will give you a new circle of friends, help you find the publications you need.

Read what you add to your library! Otherwise, all work will be in vain. A library "for furniture" is not worth the effort and money spent on it. Better buy a new TV!

Vladimir Vorozhtsov

A case from life: they came to the veteran to set an alarm in his apartment (he lived for a long time in the country and wanted to protect the apartment from thieves). In order to place the necessary equipment more competently, the employees of the security department asked: "Where is the most valuable thing in your possession?" The veteran opened the doors of his home library for them.

Today the attitude towards the book has changed in many ways. And this is not a matter of disrespect for the values ​​of the Soviet era. It's just that times have really changed. Many people like to read e-books more. And someone just understands: in order to find the desired publication, it is easier and cheaper to do it via the Internet.

The question of whether to sell old books most often arises before those who have become the owner of a home library by inheritance. Or, alternatively, your bookcases are overflowing and an audit is urgently needed to make room for new acquisitions.

The problem can be solved with the greatest benefit for yourself, if you do not rush things (all experts are unanimous that selling a library is not a very fast process), believe in success (there will certainly be a person looking for exactly those publications that you own) and go to the question is systematic - to use all possible ways to sell your product.

Sell ​​a book online

The almighty Internet is where to start. Experts recommend a simple-minded option: inquire in search engines for inquiries about buying or searching for books. If you are lucky, you will immediately find a potential buyer for your publications.

The deal can be profitable because you will carry out it without intermediaries, and you do not have to share the proceeds. Also, this is a situation where bargaining is appropriate. The main thing is to feel whether it is reasonable to slightly raise the price if people are interested in your book, and whether it makes sense to lower the price if there is a great danger of losing a buyer.

Also, on the Internet, you need to study special sites that provide services for the sale and purchase of books, communicate in forums, find out the information you need in various social networks. Do not ignore advertising portals, many of them are interested not only in clothes, household appliances, etc., but also in books, even used ones. Look for a special section such as Books and Magazines.

On sites specifically selling publications from home libraries, post your ad. According to experts, it should concern all your proposals or at least a significant part of them if the list is too long. There is a chance that someone will be interested in your entire wealth.

Do not limit yourself to the list, give additional information about your books: genre orientation of the library, authorship. If there are not very many books, indicate the year of issue, publisher, degree of preservation. You can even post photos of your copies. By the way, on some sites you will find something like a small questionnaire explaining what information must be specified. This will greatly simplify your task.

If you want to sell old, antique books or, for example, a collection of works by a sought-after author, you can put them up for an online auction.

And you can also try to solve your problem through "Ozone". This online store enters into the catalog your proposed books (not only new, but also used ones), and if there is a buyer, it will redirect him to you. Set a reasonable price, below the market price, otherwise the buyer will decide that it is more profitable for him to go to some ordinary bookstore.

Unfortunately, selling books over the Internet may incur additional shipping costs if the buyer happens to be from another city. In this case, it is better to immediately stipulate the conditions, who pays for what and in what way, so that there are no annoying misunderstandings.

By the way, do not be lazy to place your ad in traditional, "paper" media. Among those who subscribe or buy newspapers, there is more likely to be found a connoisseur of books, and he will almost certainly be your fellow countryman.

Sell ​​a book to the library

Consider this option: how to sell the book to the library. Of course, the classics published in the USSR will hardly be of interest to librarians. There are probably Chekhov and Gorky in the reading rooms and depositories, and even Georges Sand and Jack London, which were in short supply at the time.

And yet, some unique copies or lost sometime through the fault of readers may be in demand. Anyway, do a preliminary analysis of what you might suggest or invite a librarian to inspect your collection on site.

By the way, private libraries have recently appeared in Moscow, which may be of interest to your publications from the times of the USSR and old, antique ones. Some of the private libraries are carrying out a book preservation project, so (if your copies are worn out) they will restore them, and then put them on the shelves and offer them to their readers.

Sell ​​a book to a collector

Try to connect with private collectors using the Internet. On second-hand, antique editions are likely to be willing. Typically, these collectors pick up the goods themselves, and the seller does not need to spend money on transportation and shipping. But what is worth spending a certain amount on is the services of an expert, if you are sure that you have valuable rare specimens.

Sell ​​a book to a second-hand bookstore

Second-hand bookstores, accepting old books for sale, are guided by the price that the seller calls. Do not overdo it: if you ask too much, your book will be accepted, but it will stay on the shelf for more than one year and will not bring you the desired amount.

Some second-hand booksellers hold book auctions - do not refuse this service, because you may be lucky and you will receive a larger amount than you expected.

The best-selling books are those in which there is an author's signature or, for example, rare illustrations made by a famous artist. Are of value publications that have suffered from censorship. If there are notes in the margins of a book left by some famous person, the copy takes on special value.

And the quality of the book also affects the price: if after many years its pages and binding are intact, then the assessment of such a product will be appropriate.

By the way, it will be useful to study on the Internet a list of very rare antique books (it is available on specialized sites). This list was compiled taking into account the demand and supply for second-hand books over the past ten years. What if you're lucky and you find that you are the proud owner of one of the listed publications? In this case, you will be able to earn a very good amount.

09.04.18 334 099 63

In December 2016, my husband and I moved into the apartment we inherited.

Sasha Parlashkevich

inherited a room of books

In the load we got a library of two and a half thousand books. Books entirely occupied the study and part of the living room. It was impossible to make repairs or move the furniture if they were not available.

The apartment had 40 shelves of books, not counting various magazines and guidebooks that were kept in boxes and on the mezzanine.


There was nowhere to keep the books, and I didn't want to waste paper or throw them away. I grew up in a reading family, and my conscience would not allow me to just get rid of books.

We were preparing for the renovation, and for the New Year holidays we had to find someone to give the books to, so that they would be useful.

Charity

At first I thought of donating books to prison or district libraries. But it turned out to be difficult. I turned to the Criminal Justice Reform Center for help. This is a public organization that helps prisoners.

It turned out that there is censorship in prisons, and what books can be read by convicts is regulated by Art. 95 of the Penal Code. In particular, convicts must not read books that "propagandize war, incitement to ethnic and religious hatred, the cult of violence or cruelty, or publications of a pornographic nature."

The banned books recognized as extremist. In addition, prison censors, for reasons known to them alone, ban books on philosophy, personal growth, martial arts and hunting, and detective stories. Collected works of classics, according to a representative of the Center, are not popular with the prisoners themselves.

There were many books on philosophy and psychology in my grandfather's library - they would not be accepted into the prison library. As a result, only 60 books were donated - contemporary and children's literature.

At the same time, I phoned several regional libraries and found out that they do not accept Soviet publications. They only take modern detectives, women's novels and fantasy. We didn't have any suitable books. The libraries I called only accepted books for free.

60 books

I gave it to the prison library. Didn't make any money on it

Selling on the Internet

When I failed to donate the books to charity, I tried to sell them over the Internet. Book advertisements are usually posted on specialized second-hand bookshops. The most popular sites are Alib.ru and Libex.ru.

I used Libex. On the site, you need to create a personal account and manually enter each book - title, author, status, price. I set the cost based on the average prices for the same books on the site.



On "Libex" ads are free, and on "Aliba" you will have to pay a fee of 400 rubles for four months. If you plan to sell more than 250 books, the price will go up. There is no guarantee that you will recoup your contribution: books can lie for months and no one wants to buy them. If you do not answer the customer's questions about the book, it will automatically disappear from sale.

I have posted seven books on Libex. The ads hung for two months, not a single purchase request came. Then I stopped visiting the site and the account was blocked.

Second-hand bookstore

Second-hand bookstores buy old books from the population. The chief in the store is a merchandiser: he understands the intricacies of second-hand books, knows the assortment and which editions are in demand. A commodity specialist may not take books in poor condition, not in demand, or those that are already in the store.

Some shops accept books not by the piece, but by weight. They take all the books without serious flaws at the price of 5 rubles per kilogram (it's cheap). These books are then sold by the piece, but also for a penny, and those that are not in demand are sent to waste paper. It was not profitable for me, so before going to the store, I called and clarified what scheme they work.

5 R

per kilogram - at this price, second-hand bookstores buy books. It's very cheap


The store has a separate counter or reception room for books. The commodity specialist examines the books and puts them in several piles, rejects something. Often the merchant takes a couple of dozen books for a single valuable copy. He disguises a rare book in the crowd, so keep a close eye on his behavior. If his eyes light up, and the book is sent to a separate pile, it is a sure sign that you are cheap. Do not be afraid to bargain - if the merchant does not want to raise the price, keep the book for yourself and try to sell it elsewhere.

To begin with, I brought about two hundred books - that's six boxes. Sorting the books took 30-40 minutes. When the commodity expert took apart all the books, he announced the prices: "In this pile all the books are 5 rubles, this one is 15, and this one is 40 rubles." More often than not, I agreed with the price, the merchandiser recounted the books and wrote down the result in the act of receiving the goods. He also entered passport data there, and I went to the cashier to receive money. On the first trip, we managed to bail out 1,740 rubles.

35 860 RUB

I made money selling books to a second-hand bookstore. Went there 6 times

Later I went to the store five more times, loading 17-18 boxes into the car. As a result, I sold 1,830 books to a second-hand bookstore and earned almost 36,000 rubles.

How to rate a book if you're not a second-hand bookseller

Finding a truly valuable publication among old books is hard. Most books are worthless to a second-hand book dealer. But some are treasures.

Lifetime editions, copies with an author's autograph or books from the libraries of famous people with an ex-libris - a nameplate certifying the owner are highly valued. The better such a book looks, the more expensive it is.

This is how the condition of the books is assessed.

Appearance. Make sure the cover is free from creases or scratches. The spine must be in good condition and all pages must be in place. The price is influenced by the safety of the dust jacket and the presence of the case. Books with beautiful design and illustrations are appreciated above.

The language in which the book is written. Second-hand booksellers willingly take Russian-language editions, but books in foreign languages ​​were not accepted from me anywhere, not even editions of the late 19th century.

The year of publishing. Books published before 1940 are considered antiques.

Publisher. Some publishing houses did not last long, releasing books in small editions. Their books are considered a rarity. For example, the Academia publishing house worked from 1921 to 1938, hiring the best illustrators, translators and editors of those years. These books cannot be republished and are considered rare. Some series of books from the publishing houses "Science", "Mir", "Art" are also appreciated.

Circulation. The smaller it is, the lower the probability of meeting the book and the more expensive it is.

Genre. In addition to fiction, Soviet books on local history, aviation, cooking, and technical reference books are appreciated. Reprinting specialized books is disadvantageous for publishers due to low demand. At the same time, some Soviet reference books and textbooks remain relevant to this day, they are bought by students and researchers.

Books by politicians of the Soviet era are not popular. The works of Lenin, Brezhnev, Gromyko and others came out in huge editions, they do not represent historical or aesthetic value for a modern second-hand bookseller. An exception is the lifetime and pre-revolutionary work of the leader of the world proletariat, Vladimir Lenin.

Price. See how much the same book costs on second-hand book sites. Is there a big supply, is there a demand. However, it should be borne in mind that prices in large online stores and antique dealerships are often overpriced.

Seriality. There are categories of books that are almost impossible to sell individually. For example, scattered volumes of collected works. However, separate volumes of encyclopedias and dictionaries can be taken.

Let's try to evaluate a two-volume edition of a little-known publicist Vasily Sleptsov from my library.



The spines of the book were slightly wrinkled, the binding was rubbed, the pages turned yellow at the edges, but they were all intact and in place. The dust jacket has survived on only one volume. On the last page are library stamps. The edition was published in 1932-1933 by the publishing house "Academy". The circulation is over 8000 copies.

On the "Aliba" there are two dozen offers for the sale of a two-volume book at a price of 500 to 3600 rubles, but there is not a single request in the "Looking for a book" section. You can try to display books for 1000-1500 rubles and wait, but you will have to wait a long time.

Buyer

The buyer is a second-hand bookseller who is ready to go to your house at any convenient time. He is looking for rare books in good condition for little money. A home visit allows the buyer not to spend money on rent and staff - he sells books via the Internet.

I used the services of buyers twice. The first time a middle-aged man came, he bought 40 books - 25 rubles apiece. On the whole, the impression of his visit was unpleasant: unkempt appearance, tried to examine books that I was not going to sell, asked if we had old coins, orders and other valuables.

25 R

for a book - that was the price the first buyer offered me. I sold him 40 books

The buyer worked carelessly: he threw books that did not interest him on the floor, shoved some of them back onto the shelf without looking, and tore up several dust jackets.


When there were books left at home, which the stores refused to accept, I invited a second buyer. On the phone, he said that he took any books - both hard and paperbacks, if they were in good condition: there were no major damages, the pages were in place. As a result, the second buyer took almost everything that other second-hand booksellers refused to take.

Buyers are a good option to sell all illiquid assets, but do not forget that you are inviting a suspicious stranger to your house who makes money by reselling someone else's property. I do not recommend lonely elderly and gullible people to invite buyers.