Friday, September 17, 2010

The Value of Value-Added



I read somewhere that the most effective time to add a blog post is 11 a.m., so it looks like I missed the boat by a mile today. But as much as I love writing this I do have that pesky problem of trying to keep afloat as a bookseller. However, while listing this afternoon I ran across something interesting enough to drive me over here to tell you about it because it’s part of a much bigger factor to consider when it comes to bookselling – value added.

I know , I know -- it sounds like one of those corporate catch-phrases – and it is. But I didn’t pay to send my younger daughter to the University of Toledo for four years for nothing. SHE got the marketing degree, but I’m trying to make it work for me too, which lately has me wading knee-deep in electronic waters – very scary -- but that’s another story we’ll get to later. Value added simply means either finding something about your copy of a book that sets it apart from the competition, or adding something to it to MAKE it stand out. For years I have done this without realizing it had a name, and you may well be instinctively doing the same if you’re a seller, but it doesn’t hurt any of us to be reminded of its effectiveness.

The first time I recall doing it was several years ago when I bought an antiquarian children's book at an antiques mall sold by a dealer who not only had done no research on the book, but hadn’t even LOOKED inside it. I know this because in front of the back endpapers I found Michael Jordan’s signature on a handwritten note on NBA stationery. Of course selling the signature with such a ridiculously dissimilar title, even at a higher price, would just be repeating crazy. I could legitimately have listed the signed note by itself as ephemera, but it might, or might not, have been easily found by a prospective buyer, as this was before my tenure on ebay. So I mulled it over a for few days and then remembered that I had a beautiful glossy hard cover coffee table book about the NBA which featured great photos of Jordan. Due to its low selling price and high shipping cost I had planned on giving it to Eric for store stock, but instead I inserted the fabulous note inside the humdrum book and – voila! – value added. The book itself didn’t magically gain value. What it did was serve as a conduit for the note to get noticed and, ultimately,sold.

This past summer we overheard a young bookseller standing behind us in line yakking away about how these “stupid” sellers waste so much time writing big long descriptions and “looking up prices”. He could, he informed his listeners,list fifteen times as many titles as they do because all his hard covers cost the same. I refrained from uttering a peep, but my insides were doing the hula from suppressed giggles. I wonder what he would think about RESEARCH. Probably not much. But research is another way to provide value added. Take for example a book I sold this morning -- History of the Twenty-Ninth Division "Blue & Gray" 1917-1919. I noticed it had a very nice, older bookplate with the original owner’s name on it, so I I played around with the name a bit and discovered in a listing of hometown heroes from Connecticut that its owner was a WWI veteran. On the half chance that he might actually be mentioned in the book, I gave it a look and guess what? He not only was, but had gotten there by merit.

Clarence L. Dunsing is featured in the text on page 191 for Distinguished Service for "extraordinary heroism” in action near Molleville, France, October 18, 1918. During a heavy bombardment Corporal Dunsing, who was on duty as a non-commissioned officer, went along the front line of his company and administered first aid treatment to several seriously wounded men. How cool is that? The buyer evidently thought so because my copy was listed at a higher price than its competitors.

Which brings me to the fact that I still haven’t told you about the item that brought me here in the first place! If I do it right now though I’ll either not do justice to it, or this will wind up being be the longest post in blogosphere history, as it’s quite a story. So I’m going to leave it at that right now and take up the continuing saga of valued added next time. I promise there’s something in it for booksellers, history buffs, golfers, and anyone who can’t resist a human interest story. It may even break your heart -- it did mine.

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