posted 01-27-2007 06:53 PM            

The "store" which you all appear to have found on
something called Best Book Buys is ABE, the Advanced
Book Exchange. It's not a store at all, it's a bank of
computers by which independent booksellers make their
wares available to the internet public.

The feedback was clearly made by a buyer (or buyers)
who simply didn't understand that a complaint should
have been taken up directly with the bookseller, and
that any negative feedback should have been left for
that individual seller, not for the collective
clearinghouse which is known as ABE.

When it started, ABE was populated entirely by
professional booksellers. That is no longer the case.
There are now offerings made on ABE by mere
accumulators of books, people who although they have
the stock, really have no sense of how to grade and
describe a volume. And, sadly, there are no doubt a
few, probably very, very few, downright shysters. That
is a fact of life in any internet-based clearinghouse
operation; everyone's "favorite" internet auction is
evidence enough of that.

The $115 copy is still listed on ABE as available. The
bookseller is unknown to me, but the copy is
professionally described, and, based on the
description, is appropriately priced. It was formerly
part of a library collection, most likely a public
library, and for this reason alone is of literally no
interest whatsoever to a book collector. But for
someone who is interested in the CONTENT of the book,
the words and the photographs, not in the book as a
collectible object itself, such an ex-library copy
presents a very real opportunity.

As in any internet purchase, one should, of course,
satisfy oneself in advance of the reliability of the
seller, and there is more than enough information on
the pages of ABE to allow for that, email and postal
addresses of the individual bookseller, in some cases
phone numbers, links to the seller's web site, et
alia.

For what it's worth, Alibris is built on a similar
"clearinghouse" model, but it does have more human
involvement with distribution and customer
satisfaction than does ABE. Like ABE, it initially was
populated by experienced professional booksellers;
like ABE, that is no longer the case, but because of
its centralized approach to customer service, it does
offer a degree of policing against the occasional
downright dishonest seller that ABE cannot. The
downside of that staffing is that Alibris adds a
consignment fee which results in generally higher
prices for books bought through their service.

For the most part, purchases made through either ABE
or Alibris will be entirely satisfactory, and the
opportunity to own an ex-library copy of a scarce
reference book from a bookseller listed on either site
is not an opportunity to be shunned by any
knowledgeable internet buyer.
I hope this may help for any future purchases.
Jersey