I forgot to thank you for the EXCELLENT suggestions! Oath of Fealty does look exactly what I'm looking for, and "tower" did bring up more searches. I'm trying to locate stories such as Wylie and Balmer's After Worlds Collide and Robert Silverberg's The World Inside where sci-fi writers are either discussing the skyscraper as futuristic housing to solve societal problems (such as overpopulation) or as fantastic forms developed similarly (or not) on alien worlds. Well, at least so far that's my plan, although I'm sure to find other uses for them in literature as well. If you have any other suggestions, or know of anyone else who might guide me in the right direction, please drop me a line: [email protected]. Thanks!
posted on March 7, 2001 10:40:07 PM
I am a former librarian and have never ordered anything off bibliofind, at least so far, though I sometimes use it as a barometer for pricing. I would only use it for certiain hard to find specific titles that I need for a book project I'm working on [my other incarnation is that of a published author]. I've found I can get better value off ebay for titles - IF I can find them.
As a seller [another incarnation], I prefer the higher turnover on ebay, even if I don't get the same "retail" I'd get on bibliofind. It's a matter of turnover and cash flow. I can buy reasonably cheap, and afford to sell for less and make some profit even then.
My main gripe with ebay is that they need to expand their categories again. You have some mighty broad categories, like history, that have filled up and not been changed in years. Do you expect that most major bookstore chains have a big non-descript section of history? No, buyers want to find things fairly quickly and the present system has become a bloated bottleneck, even with the search engines. And there are books that elude these search engines, too. Ebay can break down other categories like ancient coins, with fewer items being sold, but for some reason books are a blind spot to them. There are more books being sold than ancient coins, yet it all goes in one big pile still.
posted on March 8, 2001 12:33:28 AM
What might be "low-end, worthless books" to a bonafide blue-blood bibliophile are actually 'pay the mortgage' inventory for me. I considered myself a book 'collector' before I started Ebaying books. If it's printed, has knowledge in it and is something I'm interested in I collected it.
I guess I'm more of a book lover than collector. Seems all my customers are too.
A book doesn't have to have royal lineage to sell well on Ebay. I've sold a lot of the Dummies series for example. I would never classify any book as 'worthless'. To each his I own I guess.
posted on March 8, 2001 09:42:49 AM
I just have a quick question regarding the earlier comments on Jane's closed auction. Some of you mentioned that the listing scrolled off the screen or loaded strangely. When I checked it everything came up just fine and it didn't scroll too far right and loaded fine. What did I do wrong...LOL.
Seriously, I do understand that different browsers affect viewing, so how do you compensate for these differences when listing items? Hope this makes sense. Thanks
From what I understand it was an eBay problem - so I think it is fixed now, I hope!!!!!
tapatti -
I thought I posted this, but ditto....many of my customers want readable books - that may be hard to find or out of print, or just a good read - condition isn't always important. And these are my bread and butter - the collectibles tickle and surprise me know and then, but I'm happy with my non-collectibles. As a reader, I'm hesitant to spend a lot on a book that I want to read.
posted on March 9, 2001 10:08:21 AM
I think the problem of lower prices on eBay has nothing to do with the quality of the item or its value. Bidders are much cheaper in their bids. Like the ad says "if you want something cheap..." Unfortunately this means I can no longer afford to offer many items or take a chance on something good but a bit pricier because I have no assurance the item will sell.
I'm sorry but I have deleted your post with the Ebay auction url. It had the email address of the buyer, and as you know posting urls linking to other folks personal info is prohibited.
posted on March 11, 2001 08:41:29 AM
sorry marty... here's one with no winners. I was fast searching for a template created after the new computer came.
The deleted said essentially that on a screen of 1024x768 Jane's auction looked fine. My concern is that now i don't have the 800x600 screen that i'd used for a few years. Since I hate to scroll (won't do it in the normal course of things) I wish to know if the new listings made now scroll.
Here's a closed auction with no bidders to check, if you please!
posted on March 11, 2001 08:52:51 AM
Janice-- your auction is not too bad width-wise.
There are several things you could do to fix the alignment (note: I am using regular brackets for the "pointy" brackets!):
1. Add a (/blockquote) just BEFORE the beginning (table) code. eBay automatically includes a (blockquote) code at this particular point -- which makes all tables sized at 100% (or even 95%) move to the right. De-activating this code WILL help.
2. Size the width at 85-90%.
3. You need to add a little "padding" between the borders and the text so that the text is not flush against the border. You do this by adding a "cellpadding" code as follows:
posted on March 11, 2001 09:41:25 AM
Thanks so much -- I've fixed one template, and will give the improved version a go. I've added (manually via view source) the /blockquote <br> to one of my templates. That should make the posting go quicker.
I don't like scrolling, and appreciate your assistance on the size factor. I've added the cell padding too -- 4 as you suggested.
posted on March 13, 2001 10:08:08 AM
another question re the </blockquote>, if you please engelskdansk:
i'm using frontpage, so to insert the code in my finished templates I open the *.htm, view source, and then make the correction, and save. When I reopen the *.htm file, my </blockquote> is at the top. The problem comes when I again do a view source. That code is NOT in the *.txt -- if i open the file in FP i get a blank spot, with the little down arrow (was using <br> after the </blockquote>, but no coding. When i save, again the </blockquote> is gone.
Am i doing something wrong, or is this a finicky FP/ IE5.5 issue that I need to get used to? I can manually insert it -- that's not a huge issue, but if there's a way to do this faster/ easier, I'd like to learn.
janice142
P.S. -- you're right, the pages load nicer with the new coding, and now no one has to scroll. One other thing i noticed is that when i look at the auction prior to clicking Submit, I see the </blockquote> line, but once posted, it's mia. Quirky, eh?
Thanks so much -- seriously, for your assistance. I like a 'clean' look to ads, and your suggestions are being incorporated already. I appreciate your clear and easy to impliment ideas.
Not sure why FrontPage does that ... I create my templates in a text file (Notepad) and then save with an extension of "html" to view them. I will be uploading Dreamweaver in a few days to streamline my coding -- but I have always enjoyed doing my coding by hand.
Once the </blockquote> is in my file, it stays and doesn't disappear. But I have to have it first in the TXT file and save it in both versions (TXT and HTML).
Front Page will also insert lots of stuff you don't need such as <HTML> <HEAD> -- when copied over I would omit those codes and only bring over the "straight" HTML codes.
Does this make sense? I could always email you later in this regard.
posted on March 13, 2001 12:49:20 PM
Just signed up at bibliofind, haven't had time to list anything.
How is everybody doing over there? At half.com I'm selling a book or two about every other day or two.
Is bibliofind as steady as that? What kind of books sell best?
Thanks for any tips.
posted on March 13, 2001 01:58:08 PM
To answer the question about selling books at Bibliofind, I've been selling through them for the last 8 months and I get about 6-10 orders a month. This is for around a 1000 books listed.
Selling on Bibliofind is not like selling on Half.com.
The customer will deal directly with you and send you their credit card info or checks.
And sometimes the sale never goes through, such as on Ebay.
As with ebay you will need to state shipping terms in advance.
As for listing the books,it's best to enter the book information on a database although I think you can enter the info directly on the bibliofind site.
Unlike half.com where you enter only the isbn number, with Bibliofind you will need to enter the title, author, book condition, price, and a description of the books contents wouldn't hurt either.
It's a lot more work than selling on half.com
and you may not get as many sales.
)