Well why not? every other conceivable profession on STW…

Anyway I’m in charge of dealing with my recently deceased mother in law’s book collection and looking for a reputable Edinburgh bookseller to come down and have a look to see if anything is worth much…I dont want a jack the lad spiv offering me 50p per metre of books. Just an honest appraisal…so is anyone in this line of work or had dealings with any decent booksellers recently?

Thanks

You need to get yourself to Bread Street/West Port, just along from the Grassmarket, there are a cluster of booksellers. Although they will likely only be interested in certain items and will almost definitely want a list of titles authors and publication dates before they will come and look.

(we only deal with bulk stuff at my work)

What kind of stuff do you have, out of curiosity, any first editions ? If it’s proper valuable you will need the services of Bonhams or Lyon and Turnbull.

A couple of shops on inverleith row as well. Only bought from them tho

Hels – sadly there is no catalogue in place and that would take me ages! Gadzooks, looks like I’m going to have to actually talk to someone rather than ask on the internet…Thanks though

How many books are you dealing with? Anything published within the last few decades and therefore with an ISBN number can be valued approximately by searching the number on Amazon. This lets you see the books which are so common they sell for pennies – a couple of quid + postage. I gave these to charity. As long as there are a few copies listed the values should be realistic. Below a certain number of copies silly values appear. I’m not convinced these are real values books sell at.

I sold a couple of hundred of my brother in laws collection this way through Amazon. Only worthwhile (for me anyway) for books selling for £15 upwards. Not worth the hassle and postage/packing for cheaper books.

Obviously older more valuable books are better valued by a specialist. Selling the lot in one batch is of course the quick way of doing it. I had the space and time to store the books over the best part of a year as they sold in dribs and drabs.

at a guess I’d say 700-800 books. A fair old mix of pretty much worthless paperback fiction. Some older maybe valuable hardback volumes and a load of hardback non-fiction historical accounts of Scotland etc/travel writing. Think it makes sense to concentrate on the latter, kind of catalogue them, contact a seller to see if there’s any of interest and take it from there, thanks IRC.

I think to be considered “antiquarian” books have to be very old and/or rare. Like 100s of years old. And preferably buried beside St Cuthbert for a few hundred years.

There are some dealers who buy books by weight, I think we have used them to get rid of large collections of donations/duplicates. Would you like me to look out some details ?

If you’re cataloguing a lot of books recent enough to have barcodes/ISBN, then there are various smartphone apps that will scan them. You can do this pretty quickly, a few seconds a book.

The best way is to setup the phone somewhere, using something as a stop to mark where to hold the book (so it has a constant focus distance, makes it scan quicker) and have a desklamp shining where you hold the books for good illumination.

I went through a hundred or so books in about 20 mins this way, ended up with a nice google docs spreadsheet listing them all.

I’ll have a word with my missus and get back to you. She’s in the trade.

Not Edinburgh just over there —->so not that far away from Edinburgh but worth a look and their site might have something is.

http://barterbooks.co.uk/

I’ve seen a few professions on here but underwater booksellers?

Don’t be silly Wrecker, Antiquarian means they don’t like horses.

Ah, that explains it 😀
Silly me.

These guys come and take books away, and it’s all for charity. I think you get a wee cut if they sell them on.

http://www.betterworldbooks.com/