Guide to Rating the Condition of a Used Book

If you are buying, selling or collecting books, condition is everything. A book in poor condition just isn't worth bothering with unless it is very rare, or unless you simply want to read it. A battered first edition of Gone With The Wind without it's dust jacket is worthless. On the other hand, if you ever find a Gutenberg Bible (good luck) with some of its pages missing, it will still be extremely valuable.

How do you rate the condition of a used book? For the most part this is not a matter of opinion. There are industry standards. Groups like the ABAA (Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America) and IOBA (Independent Online Booksellers Association) have promulgated standards and definitions of condition that should rarely be deviated from.

Here are the six grading conditions you can use to describe used books. If you have just begun collecting books, they can help you understand the descriptions you might come across on a bookseller's website or in his or her catalog:

AS NEW (Booksellers do not use the term mint condition.): Without faults or defects. It is virtually impossible to tell this book from a brand new book.

FINE: A book with very minor, almost imperceptible flaws.

VERY GOOD: A book showing some signs of wear. Any defects or faults must be noted.

GOOD: The average used book that is totally complete. Defects must be noted.

FAIR: A worn book that has complete text pages, including those with maps and/or illustrations. A fair book may lack endpapers, the title page or half-title page. Any defects or faults must be noted.

POOR or READING COPY: A book that so worn that its only merit is the complete text, which must be legible. Any missing maps or illustrations must be noted. May be soiled, scuffed, stained, or spotted, and may have loose joints, hinges, pages, etc.

Regardless of the book's condition, all flaws must be noted because they lower its value. Flaws include missing pages, including end pages and title pages; and any markings, including underlining, highlighting, marginal notes, remainder marks and former owner's names. Flaws also include mildew, stains, odors, bookplates, missing illustrations, torn pages, cracked or broken hinges, soil, scuffing, and spots. In short, a flaw is anything in or on the book that wasn't there when the book was first sold. It is also anything that was there but is now missing.

Furthermore, if a book is ex-library, a discarded library book with library markings on it, it must be designated as such regardless of the condition of the book. Generally, an ex-library book is rated good, even if its condition would be rated higher if it was not a library discard. Book club editions must always be noted as such also.

In some instances, you might find that a book seems better than good, but is not quite very good. In that case you can used good+ or very good-. Not all booksellers agree with the practice of using + or -, so I rarely use them. Instead of using very good-, you can also use near very good. They mean the same thing.

What about the dust jacket? If it is missing, it must be noted since a missing dust jacket devalues a book. A book without its jacket is only worth about 25% of one with its jacket. The dust jacket should be rated separately using the same grading that is used for books: as new, fine, very good, good, fair and poor.

Dust jackets often have another flaw that must be noted. Sometimes when a person buys a book as a gift, he or she will clip the price off of the jacket, so the recipient won't know how much the book cost. If you are describing a jacket like this, describe the jacket as price-clipped.

Here are two book descriptions, taken from my database, which will hopefully give you some idea as to how to rate a book's condition.

De Angeli, Marguerite. Butter at the Old Price. The Autobiography of Marguerite De Angeli. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co., 1971. Very good hardcover with light cover wear in a very good dust jacket with light wear, a couple small tears and part of a price sticker on the front. Not a library discard. No underlining or other markings.

Ransome, Arthur. Edgar Allan Poe A Critical Study. The Folcroft Press, 1970. Very good hardcover with light cover wear. No dust jacket. Not a library discard. No underlining or other markings, except for former owner's name on end page. Reprint of the 1910 edition published by Martin Secker.

If you want to accurately judge a book's condition, there are three things you must have or do. First, you must learn the industry standards. Have a copy next to you, and refer to it often when you are grading books. Second, you must thoroughly examine a book. Some flaws are hard to detect. Finally, you must be absolutely honest. If you are selling a book, don't fudge on its condition. If you are hesitant about whether it is very good, then grade it as good. It's better for your customer to be pleasantly surprised by getting a book that is better than advertised than to be disappointed by book that is worse than advertised. Chances are he or she will return the latter.

This essay wouldn't be complete if I failed to mention that on occasion what we consider flaws actually make a book more valuable. There is an old joke about a guy who throws out an old Bible, because, as he said, "It was written in Latin and some guy named Martin Luther had written notes on every page." Obviously, what the guy had thrown out was a Gutenberg Bible which had been annotated by the great reformer, Martin Luther. A famous person's notes in the margins of a book make the book more valuable. My notes or yours make it worthless.

In any event, your success as a bookseller or collector will be based in part on your ability to properly rate the condition of books. So learn to rate well. And while rating your books, don't forget to read some of them. After all, that's the primary reason for their existence.