how much is your library worth?

Is there any way to use library thing to tally up a rough estimate as to how much your library is worth? (lets say, for instance, amazon up the prices from all the books and give a total (plus list of books whose prices hadn't been found to add to the list)

i'd be curious to see the results of such a query.

This may also be useful for getting rough estimates for insurance purposes

How would the site know how to evaluate your book? What's the condition? Have you entered it from a source that gives detailed edition and publication information? Do you want to know what you'd get for it if you sold it to your local used bookstore, or do you want to know insurance valuation? Or the valuation for estate tax purposes?

The main problem here is that we can't hold to the Amazon data for very long. I think it's 24 hours. It might be 3 days. We have 3 million unique ISBNs. There aren't enough hours in the day to keep this stuff up-to-date. There's some idea that we could put the data it was true—presumably the date the data was loaded. At some point I'l figure this out. I agree it would be cool to get at least the list price.

Would the amount for insurance purposes be replacement cost?

IANAIA, but I would think it would be value. You probably could get a replacement cost rider, but you'd pay for it.

I use Invelos' DVD Profiler to catalog my DVDs, and it has this feature. It is pretty cool. You tell it what website to take the cost from (I use Amazon). Haven't been using it long enough to know if it keeps the price, or if it is dynamic and adjusts as Amazon's price adjusts.

As a cheap (though quick) substitute, an additional field for "Cost" could be added to the book info. You'd have to enter the information yourself (which would obviously be more accurate, but really only practical for new books you enter.)

If this feature was developed the only disadvantage would be it would need to be hidden as I wouldn't want to publicise the value of my books

8: and optional. I understand other people's reasons for wanting it, but I sure don't want it to be something I'd feel the need to put in, 'cause I don't really want to know.

One or two years ago, I thought my library actually would not be worth anything, because our local secondhand book shops would not pay anything. Then I discovered ZVAB, where 40 million (?) books are on sale worldwide. I ordered 188 books right away, because I had missed them for years, especially books related to my job, which I had given out to read. Of course I started to fill in the titles I already have, to look at the prices (they can not be ordered by Amazon, usually). To my surprise, they had gone up, from what I had paid for. There is a market now, due to global shipment of books.
If you want a rough estimation for your insurance (fire, water ) then take your monthly spending on books, times 12, times the years you buy books. When you want to know, if the books keep their value, look at how many people own it at LT, the more, the less you will get, selling it. (I don't talk about first editions, waiting besides the wine to get old)
When LT will give you the value of your books on a daily rate, it will probably be addictive and require a new self-help group.

#10; i sure wish you'd given the website of those initials. i've never heard of ZVAB and suspect it is in the Siberian desert or something. anyone who can help?

#11 Google is your friend. for the search string ZVAB I got their German site as first hit. Affiliated to choosebooks as second
www.zvab.com www.choosebooks.com
that easy.

It would be useful to have two user maintained fields for each book - one for List Price, and the other for Paid Price. Plus a currency field for each. At the moment I maintain these in an Access database run in parallel with LT, but it would be very nice to be able to ditch the Access overhead.

As long as a thread from 2007 is being resurrected, might as well add links to the other previous discussions of the related topic...

https://www.librarything.com/topic/26999
http://www.librarything.com/topic/26222
https://www.librarything.com/topic/23953

Even if you were down to an ISBN level that could specifically identify a given edition (paperback vs. trade hardcover vs. library hardcover), the values shift widely according to condition, printing, who is selling it, where it is offered, etc. The prices asked for books have nothing to do with what that same seller would pay you for your book if you were selling. At best you might say it is a replacement cost (plus shipping).

In addition to the Amazon answer (which is not so useful), there are also the used book databases which can be searched via used.addall.com. The results can be sorted by price. You need to be specific enough to get similar items. Then you need to understand what the condition descriptions mean to the sellers and how it compares with yours.

A high-priced listing might never sell at that asking price. One high-priced listing on Amazon or the used book databases tends to beget other high priced listings which stay listed for long periods of time and often don't sell. This distortion of the market is permitted by the databases because they like high prices since they get a percentage of the sale price if it sells.

I have a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. What is it worth?

Not enough information. You could find listings from 1¢ (plus $3.99 for shipping) on Amazon to perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a top condition and desirable printing.

James

@kleh, I would suggest putting your data in the Private Comments field of LT. If you want something you can process with another program from the export, store it in JSON format. No more Access database.

James

>15 Keeline: At least some of those sky-high priced listings are for phantom books. Unless there is something truly amazing about it, no book is worth $600 when plenty of like-new copies are available at close to list price. However, what the $600 listing does is make a $30 listing look like a bargain, even if $30 is gouging.

I put my book costs in private comments and made a shell script with gawk to total them (with some processing of the field itself, since they're messy). I wrote a bit about it here. Might be useful to kleh or somebody.

@PhaedraB, it all depends on the nature of the copy. Some people just want a book to read so the lowest price in serviceable condition is important. However, there can be value for specific vintage copies of a given book.

Lots of people selling books know little about them. They see high priced listings but don't know why their copy of the same title isn't worth the same or more.

James

>19 Keeline: Hence why I specified "At least some of those sky-high priced listings.."

Yes, some editions and some specific books have a great deal of value, while others have considerably less. As an author myself, as a former owner of a bookshop, as someone who is currently managing the intellectual property of a deceased author, and having in the last few years sold nearly 1000 used books from my personal library, I daresay I have some insight into how the book market works.

Yep. Me too. I was a full-time antiquarian bookseller for a dozen years (1988-2000) wish a specialty in vintage children's books and have sold things at book fairs and online since then. A lot of people who read and collect don't have that insight though. Heck, a lot of people who call themselves booksellers don't have a clear distinction between asking prices and getting prices.

One of the motivations for cataloging on LT was to get in a position where we might be able to get appropriate insurance for our collections. The first step was having an accurate inventory. Price estimates are next.

James

Would it be possible to add a field to your library where you can enter the price you paid for a book? I put the price I paid for a book in the "Private comments" field now.

>22 mene: I use the Private comments the same way. I wouldn't want a public field for that information.

Yes, Private Comments is currently the place to put this. You could find some way to encode it such as surrounding symbols or a label so that you could process a tab-separated value export file for tabulation.

James

>18 omargosh: >22 mene: >23 Taphophile13: >24 Keeline: Hear, hear, @timspalding! I vote "yea."

Another upvote for private field / fields - sounds like another use for a couple of "user-defined fields" because of sorting, searching, and tabulating.

Here is another vote for private fields to at least add the cost I paid.