I need to play with the papers again. I really do. Three days into the new week and I’m already as jangly as a charm bracelet. I’d ordered fifteen books from ebay for stock, all of which finally showed up now in what at first glance appeared to be a mountain of fun. In case you haven’t guessed, “appeared” is the operative word here. By the time I finished opening the lot I felt as though I’d slipped on a banana peel and catapulted head-first into Dante’s Inferno.
The first package showed up wet and the moisture had seeped through to the inside where it completely ruined the lower back corner of the book because the seller failed to provide interior protection for a box that had been used so many times it was as squeezable as a teddy bear. The second one was a soft cover book that could no longer close properly due to the fact that a thick bunch of newsletters (which were nice and relevant to the topic) had been stored inside it. Next came one peppered with holes from worm damage, followed by one on which the red inked upper edge had bleached to a mottled pink. To compound the problem on the latter the seller waited NINE days to ship it a nd then tried to extract more postage from me after I’d paid the invoice he sent me originally. In this instance tried is the operative word.
Of the rest, only ONE truly lived up to its billing (see photo above) and this one's been here a week or two. This seller both described it and wrapped it like a pro but, wouldn’t you know, he’s the only one to get badly burned out of all these auctions. I’ve decided I’m going to send him another $10 because he truly earned it. Five other books proved to be reasonably good and the remaining six were good AFTER I made repairs which included new backing for a spine, pressing and weighting dog-eared pages, tipping in a loose page, and cleaning dirty covers. After a fairly good previous run, this time I hit at top speed a brick wall of sub-par sellers.
The point here is not my own annoyance, the repairs, and/or the need to repackage and return unwanted books, but what the whole debacle says about the book business. I strongly suspect that the vast majority of these sellers know nothing about books and care even less about them. If I were the average reader buying these books online to either keep or give as gifts, I’d be pretty fed up by now because I wouldn’t know how to make repairs and would lack both the time or inclination even if I did. In fact, I might just decide that online book buying is more trouble than it’s worth. For sure I’d be afraid to buy on ebay. However, this is not a rant about ebay – I could do that, but I won’t – because ebay itself is not the problem in this instance. The problem is that too many sellers regard books as rectangular little moneymakers that require next to no effort on their part.
Every time a book buyer ends up badly disappointed the entire business tarnishes a little more and we who devote our lives to the cause suffer for it. Mistakes happen – I know that – and I am very accommodating when they do. But there’s a big difference between an honest mistake and shoddy work. Sadly, so few sellers bother to showcase their wares which means that the buyer ends up having little choice but to take a chance and hold her breath. In the early days of the internet I certainly got my fair share of disappointing books, but none were ever as bad as what shows up these days dubbed as excellent or very good -- the exact words used to describe every item I bought. Interestingly enough, all of the listings had at least one photo, but in the end it didn’t much matter. Despite the old saying, sometimes a picture isn’t worth more than a thousand words.
Will I buy on ebay again? Yes, probably I will because I have had success. Will I be more careful? I’d like to say yes, but I think I’ve already been careful, so I don’t know. Right now alI I can think of is the very scarce 19th century regimental history for which I paid $75. It's not even here yet and already I'm afraid to open it.
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