R. Totale wrote:
>I said "books", not titles
Indeed you did. But how helpful is that to the OP? If a title is scarce
there may actually be *more* likelihood of it being listed online,
since the seller is more likely to check it and note its apparent
scarcity.
>did not restrict it to English language
>books (a silly restriction at best I'm sure you would agree)
Well, no, I don't agree. Firstly, I have a half a suspicion the OP was
speaking about an English book, so that would render books in other
languages irrelevant. Secondly, I'm pretty immersed in books in a
number of languages. The ones I am familiar with - Japanese, Spanish,
French, etc. - appear to be listed online in about the same proportion
as English books, so the restriction was not because I thought that
discounting them would help me discredit your 1000:1 statistic, but
just because I thought it would simplify the matter.
>I don't think I was exaggerating at all.
Well, but I was asking for the rationale for your opinion, not for a
reiteration of it.
Actually, your assumption seems quite plausible in some areas of the
book world. There are over 63,000 Agatha Christies currently being
offered on ABE. If we assume that ABE covers about 50% of the online
market then, according to you, there are about 125 million Agatha
Christies being offered worldwide.
But the 50% figure is generous; when one considers that her books are
being offered - in English and other languages - on Chinese websites,
Japanese websites, etc., etc., ABE may be no more than 5% of the total.
This would mean, by your reckoning, that there may be over a billion
copies of her works in bookshops worldwide.
In theory, there are some 2 billion copies of her works floating
around. I'm not sure if that's in English or in all languages, and no
idea how many have been trashed; I googled it up at
http://sandiegoplaybill.com/reviews/reviews_hollow_coronado.html.
Anyway, neither of the two figures I have extrapolated from your 1000:1
statistic is impossible.
But, as I say, one cannot make the same extrapolations in other areas,
and the more scarce a book is the less likely one is to be able to come
up with the same kinds of figures. If there is one Shakespeare First
Folio being offered online, it is most unlikely that there are a
thousand being offered elsewhere. The same would apply to less
well-known, but fairly scarce works. I have ongoing wants listed with
ABE for works published in the 19th century which have not been offered
on ABE for all the years I have been looking. One copy of one such work
has just turned up. Are you telling me there are a thousand copies
being offered in bricks and mortar bookshops right now? I very much
doubt it. There are only a handful of copies in holding libraries, and
there are probably no more than a couple of hundred copies - at most -
in existence.
>I think for the OP to declare that no one has any particular book for sale
>=anywhere= on the basis of a Bookfinder/Addall search would be a vast
>exaggeration
True enough.
>It might approach accuracy if one had a census of all existing copies of
that particular book - but that is unlikely for his item.
What is this item? I thought he hadn't told us what it was.
>Stating that any given book can't be found for sale online at any
>particular moment might be more accurate.
Oh, it would certainly be more accurate. Still and all, I'm curious
about your rationale for the 1000:1 statistic. How did you arrive at
it?
Also, I query whether that statistic is much use when it comes to
scarcer titles. It seems to work with stuff that is plentiful, like
Agatha Christie, but breaks down hopelessly when it comes to scarce
stuff, whether it is valuable (like Shakespeare's First Folio) or not
(like the Victoriana I have been in search of for years, and expect -
if it ever comes up - to purchase for anything from $25 to $10).
John
http://rarebooksinjapan.com >> Stay informed about: Value of super rare books? 
FAQ
Profile
Private Messages
Log in
