To erase or not to erase, that is the bookworm's question.

August 5, 2009 4:00 AM

Before taking my used books to a used bookstore for sale or trade, should I erase the penciled-in prices inside the cover?

No reason: if a book has a good price on it, maybe higher than you'd expect from a used book (i.e. I was ripped off when I bought it in the first place), then I can hope for a good trade in/sell price.

Yes reason: the bookstore worker will, at the very least, be a teensy weensy bit glad they don't have to do the erasing themselves, therefore giving them a teensy weensy boost, and perhaps giving me a better deal. What do you think?

posted by zardoz to media & arts (12 comments total)

My experience has been that while used bookstores will sell their books based on some percentage of the listed price, they don't actually pay you based on the listed price. The ones that I have been too have a set price that's determined by whether it's hardcover or paperback, and what genre/subject it falls under. And usually it's a low enough price that I just donate to a library now.

In other words, if they pay $0.25 for every sci-fi paperback, it won't matter if some of them are listed at $6 and others were $14 editions; you'll get the same amount for both, even though they might make more off the $14 book.

I imagine other used bookstores might do this differently, but you'd have to find out from the particular store you intend to sell to.
posted by Nattie at 4:10 AM on August 5

No reason: unless you've got time you don't know what to do with, it just isn't likely to be worth doing.
posted by jon1270 at 4:23 AM on August 5

It won't make a difference.
posted by fire&wings at 4:47 AM on August 5

I bought books for a used bookstore for a few years. (Paging jonmc!) Our practice was to pay out roughly a fourth of the expected selling price, which in most cases had no fixed relationship to the original cover price of the book. (Newish paperbacks being the main exception.) I suppose there's some possibility that the buyer could be influenced in his estimation of the selling price by what he sees that it last sold at, but I doubt it would affect things much either direction. It's certainly thoughtful of you to erase the prices so he doesn't have to, but I guarantee that it won't affect the payout.

Short answer: don't bother.
posted by Horace Rumpole at 5:47 AM on August 5

I had the pleasure of working in a used bookstore for a while when I was younger, and I would actually take pride in correcting under- and over-valuations that I found inside the covers of books.

So to directly answer your question, it might affect prices to leave them in, but not in any predictable way.
posted by CRM114 at 5:50 AM on August 5

An interesting question since I thought it was standard procedure to erase -- it's what changes the book's status from somebody else's, to my own.
posted by Rash at 6:15 AM on August 5

Jonmc would be a good person to ask,
posted by theora55 at 7:17 AM on August 5

As a person who shops at used book stores, I hate when a book has a couple different prices on it, like a pricetag on the outside and a pencilled price inside. Not all used book sellers bother erasing the old prices, either. One place here in town has a standing "all obsolete textbooks $3" policy, but all of them have prices pencilled inside, and the policy isn't advertised anywhere; OK, maybe I tend to frequent grungier used book sellers than you do. So, I'd prefer you erase them, just to avoid superfluous markings on your books, but the bookstore probably doesn't care.
posted by AzraelBrown at 8:15 AM on August 5

I usually erase them out of some idea of neatness, but I'm pretty sure it doesn't make a difference. (I have worked at used bookstores.)
posted by languagehat at 8:33 AM on August 5

An experiment would be interesting: gather up a few sets of equally-valued books by cover price. Erase one set, leave the others alone, and try replacing a third set with higher prices. Repeat until you see a pattern, declare it a wash, or decide there are too many exogenous factors.
posted by ecmendenhall at 12:49 PM on August 5

I co-manage a used bookstore, and don't pay much attention to any penciled-in prices in books customers bring in. I know what I'd try to get for it, and pay out based on that (which is sometimes more, sometimes less than some other store's [possibly ancient] price). Sometimes it's interesting/useful to know what someone else was asking for a book in months or years past, but rarely does that count for more than what I think the book will sell for today.

they don't actually pay you based on the listed price

That's not only not true for our store, it's not true for any used bookstore I know of in this area. They all take into account the original price when figuring out what to pay out. For most paperbacks, e.g., we just charge half of the original price, so we'd pay out more for a modern trade paperback version of, say 1984, than we would for an old paperback with a cover price of 50 cents.

In general I'd say don't modify the books you have before bringing them to a used bookstore, for the following reasons I see pretty much every day:

1. Removing stickers can often result in cover damage that hurts the value more than an old price would

2. Erasing pencil prices inside a book rarely works completely even if you you use a good rubber eraser, which most people don't

3. Other kinds of "helpful" changes customers take it upon themselves to do - like ripping out part or all of a blank front page with a name written on it - utterly destroy the value of a book.
posted by mediareport at 9:32 PM on August 5

They all take into account the original price when figuring out what to pay out.

I should add I'm talking about paperbacks, mainly. When it comes to hardbacks, esp. hardback fiction (which is very hard to sell after the paperback comes out), the original price is a sad joke. But the same goes for penciled-in prices inside hardbacks. I see tons of hilariously high penciled-in prices in hardback books and ignore them completely.
posted by mediareport at 6:04 AM on August 6