QUESTION: I'd like to sell a few hundred antique books left to me by my late Aunt. They were printed in the late 1800's, early 1900's and later. Since my aunt was an English teacher, many of the books are famous or classic works. I was considering selling them to a local book dealer, who gave me this advice:

"As any book dealer will tell you, the Internet has changed bookselling dramatically. Average priced books have dropped in price by a third to 75 percent in the past year. The best thing for you would be to ... organize the books by condition. Tell us about the best first. We should be able to tell you very quickly which are or are not worth anything."

What do you think of this evaluation?

ANSWER: What this book dealer is saying is fairly reasonable -- from his perspective. But of course he wants to get books for resale at the lowest price possible. I wouldn't say it sounds unethical at all, he's just trying to maximize his profit, which is what everyone in business wants to do.

But he wants you to do some of the work yourself -- organizing by condition, subject matter, and so forth. For a bit more trouble, you can sell them yourself on Amazon Marketplace, make lots more money, and perhaps have some fun in the bargain.

The Internet has cut out the middleman (in this case the brick-and-mortar used bookstore) and has enabled sellers of books to realize the market price of their goods.

One area where I would disagree with your book dealer friend is his assertion that prices have dropped by "a third to 75 percent in the past year." Certainly, that can be true for current books where supply has overloaded demand (because a book has recently sold well, but is no longer being marketed -- or the book has been "remaindered" and the publisher dumped all their copies into the used market).

But most older scarce books are becoming scarcer online and prices are escalating. In particular, you're talking about the "high spots" of literature, which is exactly what book collectors are looking for these days.

Why are prices for highly collectible books going up? My guess is that used bookselling through popular venues such as Amazon has introduced many new people to book collecting. And since there is a finite supply of collectible books, their supply is rapidly being depleted as more people get into collecting, and the price of the remaining books is going up as they become even more scarce.

See a real-time list of the most highly sought after used and collectible books.

Read more free articles on selling used books profitably online: http://www.weberbooks.com/selling/selling.htm

Steve Weber is author of "The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site" (ISBN 0977240606). Got a question for Steve? Send to: steve_weber@yahoo.com