| Author | Message | ||
     Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.242.150 |
What do you think is a good value to ask for for a first edition of Fahrenheit 451? Condition is fair - some cracking to the spine - but it is a 58 year old paperback book - still has all it's pages securely in place (and it smells lovely) | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.183.221 |
Have a look for it on abebooks.com - you can usually get a 'feel' for a book's worth on there. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.183.221 |
...although looking on there it does seem as if the first edition was hardback rather than paperback... | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.242.150 |
Paper back and hardback were both first ed, the paperback edging in by a few weeks. The hardback is rarer though. it's a ballantyne Original and as it says clearly on the back cover - This is an original publication - not a reprint. A hardbound edition of this book priced at $2.50 may be obtained from your local bookstore. Therefore I'm confident I can describe it as a first edition. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.242.150 |
Bollocks. Someone has a Near fine edition for only £33 on Abebooks. If it was signed I could get triple figures quite easily | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.242.150 |
Mind you, as I go further down the listings, there are a dozen or so going for £150 ish that sound to be in the same condition as mine. If i had a good condition copy of the normal hardback, I could mulitpy that by at least 5. If I had a copy of the asbestos bound edition... multiply by 100. That's going for £10,000 plus!!! Should I go for it and stick a reserve of £50 with buy it now of £150? | ||
| Craig (Craig) Username: Craig Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 99.126.164.88 |
Burn it.  (I didn't say that, HE ---> did.) | ||
| Mark_lynch (Mark_lynch) Username: Mark_lynch Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 94.197.127.23 |
Abe Books is a good indicator of what a book's not worth in market terms. If the book was worth £33 to folk they'd've bought it and it wouldn't be available on the site. An alternative way of raising funds may be to do a library gig, as Neil Gaiman did in Minesota, for which he was paid $45,000 ... Nice work if you can get it. Being a nice sort, Mr Gaiman did distribute the money to various charities, but I'm surprised he considers the appearance money 'market rate'. I'm pretty sure the bloke who popped up to entertain 7 readers in Mirfield library the other week wasn't on that! | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.72.199 |
I considered selling a few of the choicier items in my library recently, but no bookseller has shown any interest. There's a guy who wants to pay 20 dollars for My Own Private Spectres, which is going for 500-600 nowadays, and not a single bookseller was interested in The House on the Borderland (H&H 1921) which fetches up to 2,000. Owning an expensive collectable book is one thing, getting rid of it at a reasonable price (i.e. more or less what a professional bookseller would ask) is quite another matter. | ||
| Mick Curtis (Mick) Username: Mick Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.176.183.221 |
Abebooks varies quite a lot - obviously if something stays unsold it's on at the wrong price, but I've picked up a few goodies on there for a fair bit below prices in other places. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.229 |
What was up with ya car, Weber? | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.242.150 |
Needs a new engine basically. It's why I'm trying to raise funds to buy non essentials like food for the rest of the month | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
Been there man... eBay kept me afloat for several months a few years ago. That was about the time I discovered the beauty of Poundland. Good luck, mate! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 129.11.76.229 |
Sell your body. That'll replace the dipstick, anyway. | ||
| Carolinec (Carolinec) Username: Carolinec Registered: 06-2009 Posted From: 92.232.199.129 |
Weber - a word of advice about selling on eBay. I see you've got the signed Stephen King on there - nice looking item! But you're selling it as a seller with ZERO feedback. That immediately puts the buyers off. You really need a track record on eBay so that people will trust you. If you sell something as a new seller, you're not going to get the best price. Also, can't recall as I looked at it yesterday, do you have the words "signed stephen king" in the title? That will attract the most searches. If you haven't, get it changed! The other problem about selling a signed Stephen King on eBay is that there are so many fake Kings on eBay now that buyers simply don't trust sellers any more. As for looking at AbeBooks to guage prices, I do find them quite expensive. So my advice would be look at their prices and then scale it down a little. Have you thought about selling via Amazon Marketplace instead of eBay? Might be a better bet though I've never tried it myself. Good luck with it. Sorry about the car, and sorry you didn't make it to the York open evening. | ||
| Joel (Joel) Username: Joel Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 217.37.199.45 |
I wouldn't recommend selling on Amazon, as so many sellers lie through their teeth that unless you say the book's in mint condition and signed by the author people will assume it's just a loose page you found on a skip. Amazon is a house of lies. Not that I am bitter. Sorry about your car, Weber. I'd recommend Andy Richards of Cold Tonnage Books as an honest trader. Obviously if you can combine several books in a package, that will deliver economies of scale (as they say in the NHS). Freelance work (e.g. copy-editing, proof reading, teaching creative writing, publishers' reading, editing/revising manuscripts) may be worth looking into as well. I did that for a while and while it's a crap way to make a living, individual jobs can deliver acceptable returns on a piecework basis. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 194.176.105.49 |
"Sell your body. " Tried that. Couldn't even afford a cornetto with the money I was offfered | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 194.32.31.1 |
What about selling your body for medical experimentation? I've tried that too... and still have the scars to show for it (thankfully all mental). | ||
| Hubert (Hubert) Username: Hubert Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 178.118.72.199 |
Sell some of your blood. Not the Sturgeon novel, but a pint or two of the red stuff. | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.241.63 |
In this country we don't get paid for donating blood. I could try sperm donation again. I used to get £30 a toss for that a few years back. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Good Lord! The thought of hundreds of little Webers running about out there...  | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.29.254.73 |
Yes, Weber used to earn £540 a week just to practice his hobby. | ||
| Stevie Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.19.77 |
Is this how civilization ends ...  | ||
| Weber (Weber_gregston) Username: Weber_gregston Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.148.241.63 |
No, that's when the cats take over... I'm sure i've explained this point before... |