Miscellaneous, Tools »

In the part of your day involving your physical inventory of books, you’ll come across a lot of small tears, rips, and worn cover edges.  About this time, as you pick up a well worn book, you might be muttering to yourself ‘glad this is a library book because the customers won’t expect me to fix it up.’ Sometimes it makes sense not to change a book’s appearance and sell the used book in as is condition.  I, personally, have no objection to the plastic wraps which libraries put over the dust jackets of books.  Having removed quite a few of these plastic covers – what happens is – the original dust jackets only become ripped without that plastic cover for protection.

A few years ago, one of my local libraries gave me a good deal on a bunch of old library books.  When I got the boxed books home I discovered that the first and last pages were cut out removing traces of the library’s stamps and markings.  Essentially these books besides being badly outdated are all books I cannot seem to sell.  The stigma of pages cut out of the book is all but unbearable for a customer.  Cutting pages out of a book even if only the blank pages inside the covers is simply taboo in the book world.  No one wants a book with missing pages.

On the other hand, the biggest pain of a used book seller’s normal daily routine in dealing with used books is usually found on their covers.  The stickers located on the covers of used books are a bane of my existence as a used book seller.  I often find myself in a quagmire over whether or not to remove these stickers.  Largely this frustration is due to having trouble finding a good product at the local hardware store which will cross over to the book industry.

Two remover products which I have tried are Oops, and Goo Gone. There are good and bad points to both of these products.  I had a nice bottle of Goo Gone with a spray nozzle that I used for a couple of years.  For the most part, the product did its job as advertised and I finished the whole bottle in a few years’ time.  It really lasted quite a while.  One concern while using any remover product is that removers are liquid and you are essentially spraying or pouring liquid onto a paper book cover.  The book cover could soak up the liquid and leave a large blotch permanently altering the condition of the book.  Worse yet, it could soak into the pages and make a terrible whole book stain. Read the full story »