Everyone wants a bargain, but how do we know if we're getting one if we don't always have an accurate sense of what books are going for nowadays?
Of all the Ian Fleming-related book questions I get asked, there are two in particular that crop up most frequently:
“What’s this book worth...?”
…and: Am I getting a bargain?
These are odd questions when you think about it.
We all know that a book is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it – and so value is (at best) relative to the market at that particular moment in time. It all depends on that rich mixture of perceived scarcity; perceived likelihood of seeing another (see my blog on this subject here); disposable income at that moment in time and so on. But ultimately, If someone really wants it, then they’ll buy it.
The best any seller (like jamesbondfirsteditions.co.uk) can realistically do is attempt sell their books at the price point which they believe is fair, and which will tempt buyers, but also yield them a meaningful return for running a business (which only survives and thrives by giving them working capital to invest in buying more books).
Which brings me on to whether something’s a ‘bargain’.
Technically-speaking, if any given buyer makes their assessment of a book as per the guidelines above, and the book they’re looking at is priced for less than a price they would have gone up to, I’d say that they’ve got themselves a bargain.
But here’s the thing I also regularly encounter.
Perception of a ‘good buy’ varies wildly between different people.
What one person thinks is an acceptable price, is another person’s ‘too expensive’ price – but – and I’m going to be frank here – it’s easy to get just a little frustrated by people still thinking the book they bought for a tenner in 1980 can still be bought for that same price (or not much more) today.
Buyers need to educate themselves too
The first rule of business is ‘don’t insult your customers’ – so I’m going to be careful what I say here!
But to me, expecting to buy rare books for pocket-money prices (or thinking today’s prices are expensive compared to yesteryear’s prices), is an expectation too far.
The only way collectors can really assess whether a book is good value or not is by doing some of their own personal education, by getting a handle on what is reasonable market value.
And the only way they can do this, is by looking around, seeing what’s out there, seeing whether books are selling, and making an assessment based on this fact.
Cartels – not really!
At this point, it’s probably worth tackling the elephant in the room – the suspicion collectors often have that they can never really assess the true value of a book, because book dealers all sort of agree amongst themselves in terms of the price a title ought to be.
Having spoken to many dealers at various different book fairs – people who really do need to make a living from selling (rather than simply hoarding books), it’s my contention that there is less market manipulation than people think.
Book dealers go out of business very quickly unless they actually ‘sell’ their stock. It’s in their interest to price books at a price-point they think hits people’s sweet spots. Sure, they want to get as much as they can, but they are also invariably realistic. They want to move stock on, and sell at a fair and reasonable price.
Price comparisons – the problem is that they’re not always clear cut!
The tricky thing is, is that the seemingly wild variations in the prices books are offered at do not make things simple for the average customer.
Take a look at these two wildly different-priced proof copies of The Man With The Golden Gun. Both of them are currently for sale. Directly below is Brought to Book's offering; below that Adrian Harrington's.
I would judge both books to be very similar in condition, and yet the price difference is literally in the thousands!
So how on earth can we really judge what’s value for money?
My advice to anyone is to establish some comparison criteria:
· Are they online or not: Bricks and mortar booksellers obviously have overheads online sellers do not – wages, business rates, insurances, staff benefits etc.. It’s for this reason I would rate Harringtons, Jonkers, John Atkinson, Lucius and other well known Ian Fleming booksellers as a good deal more expensive (I would say twice-so or even more), than your average seller. But by the same token, don’t assume online businesses have no costs either – they also have insurances; website hosting running costs and the cost of buying stock is no different. Where they differ most is having to photograph and describe each book in detail before they put it online – a time-intensive process. Physical booksellers seldom have their entire stock online; rather it’ll be on-show in their shop.
· Understanding who sellers' customers are: Sadly, the reality of the matter is that the key London boutique bookstores are probably not aimed at ‘us’. Harringtons and Maggs Bros – for example – are both based in Mayfair – equidistant from The Ritz Hotel. They attract the sort of super-car owning passing trade that don’t count coins down the side of the sofa. Their clientele means they can up the price accordingly. I would say this probably is a slight market distortion, because boutique London prices are not representative of the wider buying public.
· Are books being bought to order? Seller James Pickard is synonymous in the world of Bond, and will have cultivated a black book of contacts that means he (and probably only he), can sell an OK-condition Man With the Golden Gun for £750 (yes, I’ve really seen this price) – when elsewhere it would struggle to sell priced £250.
· What time of year is it? As someone who's sold books for many years now, I know for a fact, the summer time is a dead time for sales, and values can temporarily plummet - not necessary because the market has suddenly crashed, but because people are on holiday and not looking to buy books. This is especially the case for books put up for sale on eBay (for instance). Over the summer they can attract 'way' less than you thought they were worth (see later).
Whose buying?
eBay and other online marketplaces like abe.com (above) are where the majority of books are sold, and quite rightly, people will suggest this is the place to really look to gauge current prices.
But here the question that none of us really knows the answer to is this: ‘who is buying them’? [And by this I mean dealers or collectors?].
Trying to work out an answer to this question is important, because I believe it does feed into how the average collector makes a broad-brush assessment of book prices.
Let me explain: If eBay was a purely ‘collectors-only’ marketplace, the sold prices we can all look up would be a pretty good guide of what ‘market price’ is.
However, we are probably fooling ourselves to think that this is the case. As well as getting stock through house clearances, auction houses, and people walking in and offering to sell them books direct, dealers are lying if they said they don’t get some stock from ebay et al.
In fact, I’ve been into one top London store, and seen people at computer screens bidding on eBay books.
So – a certain proportion of ebay-listed ‘sold’ prices that can be searched for, are effectively what these dealers regard as their wholesale [or let’s call it their raw materials price] – a price they feel is ‘below’ what they can sell it for.
They’ll buy books and put the same books up for sale (for more) – at a price that covers their cost price, price of selling, and which factors in a profit margin they want to achieve.
So, the same book – which someone might have initially said had a market value of X, is now in different marketplace with a value of X + Y.
Ebbs and flows
In a long-winded way, the point I’m trying to make is that while eBay is a good starting place, it’s not always good yardstick for judging current values, because it's a buying pool that dealers also swim in.
In fact, it reminds me of the completely fantastical plot device (see extract above), that Ian Fleming used as the basis for Goldfinger – to explain the moving around of gold [by Auric Goldfinger] from country to country.
There is a passage where Colonel Smithers, of The Bank of England, tells Bond that a gold bar worth £1,000 in the UK could be moved to, say India, and suddenly be worth £1,700. By the late 1950s, I’m pretty certain the price of gold was standardized across the world (although I'm happy to be proved wrong on this!!).
Books are arguably the new gold!
Ironically, what isn’t the case for gold – its price is set and known across the world – arguably is now the case with Bond books.
As we have proved, the same book can be worth more in different settings, and even between different countries. I’m particularly aware of Fleming being far more sought after in the US for example, with prices reflecting this.
So… can we (still) tell if a book is a bargain?
None of this – of course – makes life any easier in terms of trying to gauge whether a book is a good buy or not.
And I'll be the first to admit, I've had a few very poor performing sales, when I've moved books onto eBay for a quick sale, and they’ve achieved much less than I thought they were truly worth. Take these two sales below - sold within weeks of each other only in the last few weeks.
In my mind it shouldn't be the case that a very rare 3rd impression Casino Royale (albeit with a facsimile jacket), barely scrapes £100 more than a 9th impression one. But there you go. At that particular point in time, that was what the market dictated.
Wrong time of year I feel. Lesson learned!
Whoever got the 3rd impression did - in my view - get a bargain.
Takeaways
Most people tend to define a good buy as when they’ve been able to buy for less than they wanted to pay, or also for less than what they think it’s ultimately worth.
If it’s the latter (but even if it’s the former), I feel the impetus is still on the buyer having some vague notion of what current values are.
I’ve found most people – over time (and through concerted looking), do tend to build up a gradual sense of current book values. Through this they can normally deduce whether they think a book is expensive or not, and crucially whether it’s expensive compared to the market norm (rather than just what they think is expensive).
Being armed with a sense of what seems the ‘right price’ enables people to take the emotion out of price and away from other, personal perceptions of cost.
A fair market value might well sound 'expensive' to some, but this way, it can also simultaneously be seen as pitched correctly.
It’s those that haven’t kept their ear to the ground, and haven’t updated their mental price-lists that tend to be shocked when they see current prices.
And I would say this is their shortcoming rather than it being the sellers’ fault.
Next week...
If we've whet your appetite for gauging prices, we feel the best way of demonstrating it is with an actual book.
So, next we're going take a look at one specific book - Casino Royale. This is the Fleming novel everyone wants a first impression of.
But how has/are its prices changing over time?
Will its value keep increasing?
How deep do your pockets have to be to get a decent copy today...?
Come back next week to find out...
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