First of all: a small amount, normally about USD $1.00-$3.00, goes toward shipping and handling -- meaning packaging, and the time and cost of getting your item to the post office.

After that, the price is determined by the rarity of the book. Almost all the books in this store, except for the newest ones, are relatively scarce. Some of them, especially the older hardcovers, are extremely hard to find in any condition, let alone mint (which most of ours are, having been in safe offsite storage for many years*).

In the case of the rarer books, we have a look at Abebooks, Ebay, and other online sources to see what the going rate seems to be. Then we set our prices accordingly, bearing in mind that all books will be signed and personalized when they leave us, and therefore a bit more valuable than when they first arrived.

When we were previously shipping books out of our sister store at Ebooks Direct, to prevent trouble with the shop's fulfillment system (which was set for data and not physical goods) we included the price of postage, packing and handling in each book's sale price. However, now that we have a separate shop for handling physical goods, we no longer have to operate that way. The new shop will calculate your item's postage costs from its weight at checkout time.

Meanwhile, thanks for taking time to look through what we have on offer!

*Until some years ago when we moved them into the house. Now we've realized that there's no way we need all of these. We need the extra space more. :)