Firstly, let me start off this
review by saying that I know the author. However, I do take book reviews
very seriously (perhaps too seriously, as anyone who has visited Authortrek will
know), and it’s not worth losing my integrity by giving a good review to a bad
book (even though this can lead to some awkward situations, especially when
dealing with SF authors, who all seem to be highly trained in Matrix style
martial arts, or crime writers, who know a lot about killing people). But
I doubt if I ever need to fear Fiona Shoop, even if she is an avid crime
fiction reader.
I picked up this book because I was interested in selling my own collections
online, but was not quite sure how to go about it, even though I use the
Internet a great deal everyday (although ‘Starting and Running an Antiques
Business’ is far more comprehensive than just selling online). I was
particularly concerned as to whether I was selling an item at the ‘correct’
price, and did think about buying books on the subject. However, Fiona
Shoop’s advice is that such ‘book prices’ are more often a hindrance than a
help, and I have discovered for myself that there is a ‘market price’ for
everything. Despite Fiona Shoop’s advice to buy low, and sell
competitively, I have been tempted to buy low and sell high, as I believe that
this will involve less work. The Internet does allow you to distinguish
quite quickly between what items sell low and high. I have been tempted
to do a market analysis that I could transfer to a PDA (i.e. high profit book
ISBNs/authors/titles could be listed in a simple database in this way), so that
I can spot high profit stock when buying with more ease. However, you
might be able to get away with doing this in the relative privacy of a charity
shop, but the average car boot dealer might consider you to be a bit rude and
would probably up their price if they saw you doing this. At the risk of
losing a bargain, it might be best to walk away to a more secluded spot to
check the market value on your PDA, the same kind of behaviour that Fiona Shoop
advises when spotting a bargain at an auction (i.e. writing in code on your
auction catalogue). Having written that, just because something is rare,
it does not mean that it is valuable, so Fiona Shoop’s advice to buy what you
like is itself invaluable. While a mobile phone is currently
indispensable for any dealer (p. 40), a future mobile phone with wireless
Internet access in the hands of a bargain hunter could be very dangerous.
As Fiona Shoop writes on page 193, ‘The bottom line is that you can sell
anything over the Internet but you might not always get as much as you
want”. In my own preferred market of books, I have seen very many rare
titles sold at appallingly low prices on the internet, because all the
specialists are competing against each other in the same market (see pp. 27-28
for this issue discussed in a slightly different context). My concern
would be with that future mobile internet devices could damage sales at
antiques fairs and centres, because the bargain hunter could just compare the
price of the item on the stall, with the same or similar items price on the
Internet. In the case of books, they could just type in the ISBN, and
negate your stall fee and your petrol costs at the stroke of a button. On
the more positive side, one could view the current low price of certain items
on the Internet as an opportunity to buy cheap stock.
This book
has given me the confidence to sell over the Internet with ease, and Fiona
Shoop gives excellent advice as to how go about it. You may have
previously found selling online at certain sites to be confusing, but with
Fiona Shoop’s guidance, you will find it a breeze. Although Fiona says
that “you will need a camera” for selling on the Internet (p. 205), I have
found that I have been able to improvise without one. Since my two
markets are books and videos, I have been able to utilise my flatbed scanner to
take pictures of the covers. It only took me a few minutes to adjust the
scanner for this purpose, such as choosing the options to scan for a web image
(you will get the perfect picture and what’s more, the perfect file size – the
same image could be too unwieldy at 10 times the resolution or 10 times the
size). You can also buy a dark sheet of cardboard from your local art
shop or stationer’s as a flexible background, that will allow both you and the
scanner to pick out and crop the image you desire with ease (this method works
particularly well with old Blue Peter annuals, just as long as the double-sided
Sellotape doesn’t smear the scanner glass). The only negative side is
that the resulting image may be too good – you will have to be explicit in describing
any faults meticulously at the risk of deterring your customers, but this is
much better than disappointing buyers fooled by a glossy image.
Uploading such images is much more straightforward than Fiona allows, since the
famous auction site that she discusses in chapter 4 will upload your images
from your own hard drive or a floppy disc (as long as you’re online, of
course). Needless to say, using just a scanner won’t work if you want to
sell items with more complex shapes online, such as china. On page 197,
the author advises you to go for a 10-day auction at the most famous online
auctioneers, but if you are selling to a competitive market, where hundreds of
items are being sold in your chosen category, then I would advise you to time your
listing so that it finishes on a weekend afternoon, since auctions that are
about to finish look to be ranked higher. I would also be wary of
recycling boxes from famous online booksellers (p. 199), as carriers have been
known to assume that such packages are customer returns to said booksellers,
despite any other addresses to the contrary (so when you “Sellotape the box…
profusely”, make sure you completely cover up the logos from other mail order
companies to avoid confusion).
Fiona Shoop’s prose style is very easy to understand and is a delight to read. Now that I have started to take dealing more seriously, I have got a few books on accounting out of the library, but they turn something that should be simple into a technical nightmare that just makes the reader feel more insecure. In contrast, I felt compelled to buy my own copy of ‘Starting and Running an Antiques Business’ after borrowing it from the library, as I knew that I was going to have to refer to it again in the future. Although my main interest is in selling books, I found all the other chapters to be never less than very stimulating, so much so, that I almost missed my stop on a rail journey that I had made hundreds of times before, just because I was so engrossed in this book. You could just read the chapters that interest you, but reading the book cover to cover is also highly enjoyable. Admittedly, some pieces of advice are repeated throughout the book, but only where necessary, and this serves to reinforce some very good advice. I did want to find out more about how to record the accounts, since I have never run a business before, but there are other sources for this kind of material (I have my eye on the ‘Simply Books’ software package to guide me in this). Fiona Shoop gives you all the confidence you need to become a successful self-employed antiques or collectables dealer, and as long as you do everything by the book, you will have a good time and will have nothing to fear. Most people will have collected something in their lives, so this book will appeal to most readers, even if they are more interested in buying than selling. The only thing that is actually wrong with ‘Starting and Running an Antiques Business’ is the picture of the author, which is hardly flattering. The photographer should have read pages 203-204 – for one thing, the powerful overhead light creates some unwanted reflections, and worst of all, makes the author look prematurely grey!
Authortrek Rating: 10/10
Review
by Kevin Patrick Mahoney
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