Essential New Terms Bookdealers Need

 

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Some of these aren't completely new but they are all needed.

 

 

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anti-theft device / anti-theft implant / security patch. microchip enclosed in a piece of flat, rectangular plastic and affixed to the book or jacket, used in connection with electronic door monitoring devices ("anti-theft portals") as a deterrent to book theft. Used by new book stores and by many libraries.

 

BASIN. Amazon's code for one specific item. Amazon uses a dual system of book numbers for cataloging books: those with no International Standard Book Number (ISBN) must then be assigned a BASIN. No book may be sold on Amazon without either an ISBN or a BASIN. Term coined by Andy Gutterman, the wizard behind BookTrakker, from Book + ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number: Amazon's own term for their code).

 

Big A. any one of the three main online bookselling portals: Amazon, Abebooks, Alibris. Term usually used by bookdealers who have little respect for the Big As.

 

bodice ripper. romance novel. A pejorative term.

 

bonkbuster. romance novel. A pejorative term from the UK.

 

book doctor. an emergency editor. This term from the publishing business. A book doctor gets handed bad manuscripts -- ones that the publisher has already paid for -- and has to fix them up in fast time.

 

book ferret. an exceptionally gifted book scout: one who seeks out and finds good used books for resale.

 

bulk loading. adding descriptions of your bookstore inventory to the database of a portal by uploading a single file containing all your records. The opposite is handloading.

 

castrated edition. bowdlerized edition; an edition of a previously-published book from which all "immoral" or "obscene" passages have been removed.

 

colportage. 1. door-to-door sale of religious books and tracts. 2. general term for lowbrow writing or trashy fiction.

 

colporter / colporteur. one who sells religious books and tracts door to door.

 

concise edition. abridged edition. A very nice euphemism.

 

corgorbled. describes a page or leaf in a book which is creased, bent, folded, or poorly trimmed due to the paper having a fold in it while the book was being manufactured. In most cases a book with corgorbled pages is not considered to have a serious flaw. (coined by Gwen Foss, Alan's Used Books)

 

crossbound undulations. wrinkles or crinkles to the spine of a paperback book, as issued. Not creases. (coined by bookdealer David A. Anderson, who said: "The printer has, either from economy or ignorance, cut his printing stock with the paper's grain running across the page rather than parallel to the binding edge. The effects of variations in humidity cause the bound text block to strain and ripple.")

 

description-generating service. a software product or website that provides stock data to sellers of books, CDs, DVDs, and similar media. These services invariably provide some small amount inaccurate data and most also provide images of perfectly new specimens; these images are then displayed beside offerings of used items and, in some cases, are understood by the customer to be images of the actual items they are purchasing, which causes problems for both customer and dealer. Also called a "professional data supplier."

 

demming. sending an email reminder to a customer who keeps promising to send a check but never does. (coined by Gwen Foss, Alan's Used Books)

 

dimple. a very small, uncolored, impressed mark on the lower right corner of the rear board of a hardcover, usually a round mark but occasionally a small square or other shape. Such a mark is an indication that the book in hand is a Book Club Edition, even when the same book also carries the words "first edition" on the copyright page.

 

dumping. getting rid of worthless books. Some dealers give them to public libraries for resale, or donate them to charities that take books; some dealers simply throw them away.

 

EAN. European Article Number. Systematized product numbers used in Europe, equivalent to UPC in the US.

 

EAN-5. a 5-digit code, including a small bar code, that follows after the EAN or ISBN code. This code shows the retail price of the item, where a 5 (code for US$) is followed by the price in dollars and cents, or it is shown as 90000, a null code meaning no price has been encoded in the bar code. Also called the EAN add-on.

 

emblem book. a type of book, popular mainly between the years 1500 to 1800, in which words and pictures are combined into "text-image puzzles" by which large ideas are conveyed in little space, or by which the juxtaposition of the words and pictures says something new.

 

empty email. any free, web-based email service, popular with scammers because they are untraceable. Examples: hotmail, yahoo, lycos, gmail.

 

fake book. (accent on the first word.) a type of songbook in which only the melody line and guitar chord symbols are shown, and the first verse of the lyrics; it is used by any musician who wants to be able to perform (usually) well-known pop songs or folksongs but only needs a musical "skeleton" to play from. Such music is called "fake" because it does not contain the full accompaniment written out. Some fake books are one-of-a-kind items homemade by musicians but there are also authorized publications.

 

garbage book. worthless book; junk book of the lowest possible quality. Examples: ten-year-old stock market strategy guide, six-month-old self help book, Reader's Digest condensed book, paperback missing its front cover.

 

Grishamite. general term for common books ones finds listed in the hundreds online and priced for $1 or less. (based on the name of author John Grisham whose popularity is such that his books have first printings in the millions; coined by Shawn Purcell, Balopticon Books and Ephemera)

 

hamster damage. indicates that the book has been gnawed by some creature with very small teeth and, for marketing purposes, the dealer has chosen to blame the situation on something cute.

 

handloading. selling books online by selling through a portal where each book must be added to the portal individually. The opposite is bulk loading. Some sites offer free use if one handloads and charge a monthly fee or fee-per-item (or both) to bulk upload.

 

handselling. selling books "by hand" or from a table while standing on a street corner. Also called street selling.

 

homeward. when a used book or piece of paper ephemera is purchased by someone who is the author's son, the publisher's daughter, the illustrator's grand-niece, or any similar relationship. Customer, item, and transaction may all be described as "homeward" because the item is "going home." (coined by Gwen Foss, Alan's Used Books)

 

ignoramiana. books pushing ignorant ideas such as aliens making crop circles or Elvis being alive and well and living in Kalamazoo. (coined by Gary L. Wallin, Bookseller)

 

ISBN-13. 13-digit International Standard Book Number. These were implemented on 1 January 2007 and replaced the previous 10-digit system. The prefix 978 comes from the EAN code (universal bar code) for "bookland" meaning the product is a book or a book-related product (spoken-word audio, calendar, etc).

 

ISMN. International Standard Music Number. Equivalent to an ISBN for a published piece of music.

 

kenaf. plant whose fiber is made into paper. Most paper today is made from wood-pulp. Kenaf paper is relatively new but holds the promise of helping to preserve our forests by changing how we manufacture paper.

 

layflat binding. a fairly new form of softcover binding in which the textblock is glued in the same manner as a perfectbound book, but the backstrip is attached only along the hinges. Also known by the brand name Otabind. The book will lay flat when opened without the spine being creased or broken. Used mainly for reference and music books.

 

lie-berry. a bookstore as seen by the unwashed masses.

 

long tail. descriptive of a product that stays in the warehouse a long time before it is sold. Large companies generally avoid long tail and move it out of the warehouse after a short period and replace it with something that will sell more quickly, whereas a small online bookdealer might hang on to it for years before it sells.

 

L@@K!!!!. frequently seen on eBay being used by idiot sellers.

 

mega-lister. pejorative term for a bookselling operation which holds no actual inventory but represents itself as having a warehouse full of rare volumes or hot bestsellers. The typical mega-lister offers thousands of books for sale online, usually at ridiculously high prices; fulfills orders by dropshipping; and when an order can't be fulfilled, simply cancels it without revealing the true situation to the customer, all while bragging about their huge inventory and their wonderful reputation for customer satisfaction.

 

merrick. Amazon transaction where the customer writes glowing feedback about the dealer but rates the dealer less than 5 out of 5. (coined by Gwen Foss, Alan's Used Books)

 

newbie. one who plunges into the used book business with no knowledge of books, used or otherwise. The average newbie might find one good book out of every twenty they buy, and, if they’re smart, they get out of the business shortly thereafter. One seasoned dealer referred to newbies at used book sales as "gadget encrusted locusts."

 

penny seller. bookdealer who sells via one of the major portals and who offers tons of garbage books priced at $0.01 each.

 

pre-gifted book. used book; a truly horrible euphemism!

 

professional data supplier. another name for a description-generating service. Term used by Alibris.

 

return stock credit fraud. the unethical practice on the part of some new-book dealers to acquire book club editions, remainders, or pristine used copies of a particular title, then return them to the publisher or wholesaler claiming they are standard trade editions the dealer had previously purchased from them, and receiving full credit for them. This type of scam is the primary reason publishers began inventing systems to distinguish trade editions, which sell for full retail price, from discounted remainders and book club editions.

 

sales channel / sales venue. website where various independent dealers can pay fees and commissions for the privilege of selling their wares online; a portal. Terms used by Alibris.

 

SKU. Stock Keeping Unit. Usually pronounced "skew." A system of retail product codes utilizing a unique number code for each specific product. Most merchants have their own system of SKUs.

 

sleeper. general term for any individual for-sale item, such as a used book, priced far below its current market value. Savvy book scouts hunt flea markets, estate sales, eBay and other venues for sleepers which they hope to resell at a nice profit. The opposite is a toss.

 

smamped. smeared with something that looks like jam, a fault often found on books handled by very young children. Coined by author and blogger Erica Perl, who blogged about it in 2007.

 

swag method. pricing method used when a bookdealer can find no history or other helpful information for a particular item. Acronym for "scientific wild-assed guess."

 

tinkering. going through your inventory records book by book and modifying prices and/or descriptions in hopes of selling more books. (coined by Christine Volk, Book Fever)

 

toss. general term for any used book purchased by a dealer in hopes of reselling it at a profit but who, after some research about it, finds it to be essentially worthless or worth so little it is not worth trying to resell; it is then dumped. The opposite is a sleeper.

 

underprice / undersell. to price a book much lower than the current market value. This occurs sometimes through ignorance on the part of the dealer, and sometimes is done out of the desire for a quick sale.

 

UPC. Universal Product Code. Systematized product numbers used in the US, equivalent to EAN in Europe.

 

uplifted. raised; euphemism for a what has been done to a price that has been raised by a dealer above his or her base price when listing the item on a portal that charges exorbitant fees or commissions.

 

weeding. going through your inventory book by book and tossing the ones that you think are just not worth hanging in to. Also called pruning.

 

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