Thanks again, everyone. I'll try to get some individual shelf shots up soon...if nothing else, at least some shelf shots of particular key authors.
Originally Posted by
biomieg
I also like your online book database. Do you have every book you own in there, including reading copies, or...? Do you keep track of the market value of the books, or are these the prices you paid for them?
Just about every book, yes. There are a few reading copies that are so valueless that it wasn't worth the time to input them (and they typically get traded in at local bookstores shortly afterwards anyway). There's also some non-fiction that hasn't made it in...for whatever reason, I don't worry too much about inputting that type of material. But, yes, that's probably about 95% of my books...I just pulled up the database and it shows 2287 books at the present time. As books that did get recorded are sold -- either traded in at local bookstores or sold on eBay -- they are of course removed from the Excel database.
I originally constructed it and posted it on-line for two primary reasons: 1). If something happens to me, my wife knows the approximate retail value of each book...I'd hate to think my signed copy of UNDER THE DOME or SILENCE OF THE LAMBS -- both worth several hundreds of dollars -- and many other such valuable books would be sold for a couple bucks each at an estate sale, and 2). If I'm at a bookstore and can't recall if have a certain title or not, I can pull up the on-line database while I'm there and find out (interestingly, though, I've only had to do that a couple times...my memory may falter at some things but not when it comes to books). Plus, it's fun to show off on rare occasions like this.
The values -- no, they're not what I paid for them, they're the retail values I assigned the book
at the time I input them into the database by averaging values found at ABE, AddAll, eBay, et al. That italicized portion is the caveat: As we all know, books often fluctuate in price...what was once a hot item can cool off for a variety of reasons, or, conversely, an item that wasn't worth much at one point can rapidly increase in demand and value. Others may stay relatively stagnant. While I'll occasionally go back and revisit a value for a particular book, I rarely do, so the values I assigned my books may or may not be reflective of their true value at any given time. I just don't have the time (or, frankly, the interest) in keeping up on the values of all 2000-plus books in my collection. Thus, the database can be looked at as an approximation of the true values. 'Sides, we all know retail value and resale/true value are often two very different things.