Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #27

I have decided that in some cases in which the seller is a knowledgeable, regular seller of series books that I am neither going to identify the seller nor link to the auction.

Nancy Drew RARE COMPLETE SET Vintage PC Books 1-38

The auction has the subtitle: ALL BLUE & WHITE ENDPAPERS Original Text & Cover Art

The subtitle appears to state that all of the books have the original text, which is not true for #1-4 and #6 in the picture cover format. Those titles were never printed with the original text in the picture cover format.

I do not believe that the seller intended to mislead buyers, since the seller would be risk a negative from the buyer. I am sure that the seller meant that all of the books that could possibly have the original text in the picture cover format have the original text in this auction.

Question: Hi, How many chapters are in volumes 1-34, twenty five or twenty?

Answer: Per the series-books.com webpage: "[extremely long quote saying that #1-4 and #6 with 25 chapters were never issued in PC format, etc., removed to keep this brief]" Any of the books in this set that were ever offered with 25 chapters/revised text are included, including the extremely rare #7. Those that were never printed in picture cover form with original text are early editions with blue endpapers. Hope this helps!

The seller did a great job of clarifying the situation by quoting my site. It is my opinion that that information should have been stated in the original description. The seller did improve the situation slightly upon relisting the auction by providing the above question and answer in the item description. Unfortunately, it did not help, possibly because the quote from my site was way too long and wordy.

Question: Hello, Can you please tell me if these books are the originals and not the revised editions? They would have 25 chapters, not 20. Thanks,

Answer: Please read the answer to the question at the bottom of the page. Some pcs were never available with original text. Ones that were are included in this set. Thank you!

The statement "Some pcs were never available with original text. Ones that were are included in this set" should have been placed at the beginning of the item description in the first place when the first auction was created. Not only that, but had the seller stated that #1-4, 6, and #35-38 have 20 chapters while #7 and #8-34 have 25 chapters at the beginning of the description, the questions never would have been asked.

I have strongly advocated that buyers need to educate themselves in order to avoid having to ask unnecessary questions. I also strongly believe that sellers need to clearly and concisely state the pertinent information at the very beginning of the item description so that they will not have to answer unnecessary questions. It saves everyone time.

A number of buyers are confused because of inadequate or unintentionally misleading information in descriptions. A big part of the problem is that many knowledgeable sellers, including me, tend to leave out important information. I learned my mistake when I began to get certain types of questions.

When I listed books, I assumed that my buyers realized that #1-4 and #6 never existed in the picture cover format with the original text. I also incorrectly assumed that buyers realized that #35 and up never had 25 chapters.

It is very important that all knowledgeable sellers help to educate buyers of Nancy Drew books. I cannot do this alone. The confused newbie buyers are not reading this blog.

I wrote a number of guides for series books that are posted on eBay through my account. These guides explain the important points to collecting series books. Until the new search, the guides displayed in the left sidebar of the search results pages, at least most of the time. Those links helped people learn about the books. I periodically received emails from people thanking me for the information or asking me for more information.

Since eBay has "improved" the search by removing the links to those guides, the buyers will no longer be reading them. The guides are still there, but eBay has the reviews and guides section hidden quite well. The easiest way to find them is through a Google search, so buyers will never see them again. I can get to them through my user ID, but otherwise, it is hard to find a way.

So again, help me out here. If you sell series books, clarify what you are selling. Tell your buyers what you mean when you state that the picture covers all contain the original text. Tell them that certain ones never had the original text. Do not assume that they know. I can assure you that many of the buyers are buying blindly and have never visited my website nor any other helpful website.

Something else to keep in mind is that buyers need to see in print on the screen that the books have 25 chapters. Telling the buyers that the books contain the original text is not enough. The buyers cannot be certain that a seller is knowledgeable. When a seller states that the books have the original 25 chapter texts, the buyer can be reassured that the books are indeed what they want, and the seller may get a higher price for the lot.

June Sales on Bonanzle - And More Thoughts

A comment was made to my previous post which brought up a good point: It makes the most sense for sellers to sell wherever the most buyers are, which is where the most money can be made, and that place is eBay. This is an excellent point and is important enough for me to repeat my response in this post to make sure it is read:

Generally speaking, you are correct. My problem was that people were not buying my books. I saw a significant decline in my sell-through rate from last summer to the end of December, and the books that did sell sold at the opening bid prices. There was no point in running auctions.

I absolutely refuse to describe my books as the nicest, most fabulous, superb, perfect, spectacular, and rarest books that I have ever seen, so I cannot compete with the sellers of Nancy Drew books on eBay. If the books were the best ones I have ever seen, why would I be selling them? It would be disingenuous for me to describe the books that way.

Two sellers who describe their Nancy Drew books in the above fashion have 30% and 40% sell-through rates, and I figure it is because the buyers just eat up those kinds of descriptions. I just can't do it. I care what people think of me, and I would feel like a liar if I did that.

I had to go back and check to see what my sell-through rate was during the last week of December. It was 26%, and I was eaten alive by fees and took an overall loss on the books. 26% is too low for me. I personally need to have a sell-through rate of at least around 40% for it to be worth listing my books there. It is the sum total of what my books cost me, how much time I spend typing descriptions, how much time I spend packing the books, and how much the fees cost me. I spend more time than some sellers, so I need a higher sell-through rate.

Some sellers should not leave eBay, such as the one who has a 40% sell-through rate. I am suggesting that ones like the one I mentioned in my post should consider trying another venue. Anyone who has a sell-through rate of under 20%, who sells primarily Nancy Drew books, and who does not overuse RARE RARE RARE all the time needs to find another venue.

My traffic on Bonanzle has really increased during the last month, so I expect that by fall, Bonanzle will begin to become a viable venue for the more obscure series books. It actually already is for me, but I am able to generate traffic through this blog and my website.

In an upcoming post, I am going to compare some sold prices on eBay to what I am getting for sold items in my booth. I am getting higher prices than some sellers on eBay.

Since I wrote the above, I have thought about this some more. I checked another seller, who is a great seller who lists some very obscure books. This seller exclusively uses the auction format with the Buy It Now option enabled for a slightly higher price. This seller has listed 224 books in the last two weeks and 43 of them sold. This seller's sell-through rate is 19.2%. The fees are quite steep for auction listings, so this seller paid a lot in fees. It may still be worth it for this seller, since I do not know what she pays for her books. It is questionable at best. Oh, and this seller does not abuse the word RARE like certain sellers and describes her books in an unemotional fashion just like I do. I love her. :) But, she is not selling very many books since she is not appealing to her buyers' emotions.

I had already mentioned two sellers who like to use superlatives to describe their books, and these sellers have 30% and 40% sell-through rates. Another seller who is of the same ilk and abuses RARE so that it means nothing has a 61% sell-through rate.

What it means is this — people who are willing to use superlatives and exaggerate the scarcity of commonplace books are doing great on eBay. Those of us who believe in using the word "rare" properly and who do not exaggerate the condition of our books need a different venue.

It is quite likely that those sellers who remain have a higher sell-through rate than they once did simply because people like me have vanished.

To clarify my point from my previous entry, sellers who have a low sell-through rate need to look into finding another venue. Sellers who are doing great on eBay should certainly stay there, but even they need to keep their options open in case eBay declines further.

June Sales on Bonanzle - More Thoughts

I replied to a comment on my previous post, and I have some additional thoughts. I mentioned in my comment that I hoped people who are still selling on eBay will consider trying Bonanzle.

I predict that Bonanzle is really going to take off this fall. If I am correct, then sellers need to at least investigate selling on Bonanzle. When I created my booth in early January, I spent several weeks just messing around in order to figure out how the site worked. I did begin adding items in earnest until close to the end of the month, and I have been building my booth ever since that time.

Bonanzle is getting easier and easier to use. There have been some invoicing problems, in my case mainly for international transactions, which are currently getting worked out. I am excited that international transactions are gradually getting easier to complete. Yay!

Why not try Bonanzle out now during the summer slump?

I notice that more of the regular series book resellers are shifting to the 30-day fixed price format on eBay. I chose one of these sellers and took a look at how many listings this seller has had in the last two weeks and what the sell-through rate was. In eBay's continuing efforts to reduce our access to information, we are now limited to just two weeks' worth of completed listings via seller search.

This seller has listed around 300 items in the last two weeks, and 44 items sold. This is a sell-through rate of just 14.7%. The seller did have several transactions for above $100, so a pretty good amount of money was brought in. I have to assume that the seller is making enough of a profit that he or she is satisfied with eBay's performance.

For me, a 14.7% sell-through rate on 300 items is unacceptable for what eBay charges sellers. The fees are not so bad when most items sell, but when few items sell, the fees are a burden. Additionally, fixed price items in the books category have a final value fee of 15%. In my opinion, it is hardly worth it.

I am going to compare my own sell-through rate, or rather, rate of sales on Bonanzle to this seller's sell-through rate based the past two weeks, even though the two venues work differently and cannot be validly compared. Bonanzle's items are non-expiring and will eventually sell, while eBay's fixed-price listings do expire.

I have probably around 375 items in my booth that are not freebies. Many of my items are ones that I would never list on eBay, like all of the ones that are under $10. Let's remove some of the under $10 books from consideration and say that I have 300 items in my booth, which brings me to the same number of items as this eBay seller. I have sold 19 books in the last two weeks on Bonanzle, which makes my sell-through rate 6.3% for the last two weeks.

My sell-through rate on Bonanzle is slightly less than half of the eBay seller's sell-through rate. The sell-through rate on Bonanzle is lower than that of eBay, due to the site having far less traffic. The difference is that I am paying absolutely no listing fees and lower final value fees when the items sell. I am saving a ton of money.

Perhaps even more importantly, I no longer have to worry about constantly changing rules. I don't have to worry about my 30-day DSRs or my Best Match search standing. Speaking of which, my search standing is currently "raised" on eBay. My search standing seems to be "raised" whenever I have nothing for sale.

I recommend that current sellers on eBay who use the 30-day fixed price format give Bonanzle a try. If you usually have around 100 items for sale on eBay, list 50 to 75 of them on eBay and the rest on Bonanzle. This way you still have your eBay sales and can try out another venue. As you sell books on eBay, you can tell your buyers about Bonanzle and suggest that they check out your booth. Just make sure you do not use eBay's message system to tell your buyers about Bonanzle, for obvious reasons.

I have already had nine transactions on Bonanzle since July 1. My sales have picked up over what they were a few months ago, so the growth continues.

June Sales on Bonanzle

EDITED TO ADD: In June, I had 15 transactions. One transaction does not show on my invoice due to a glitch.

At the end of May, I gave my May sales stats for Bonanzle. In May, I had 16 transactions, and eight of them included multiple items purchased. From January through April, I had six, seven, or eight transactions each month. In June, I had 14 transactions, and six of them included multiple items purchased. I have had an increase in the number of transactions during May and June. Here is a screen cap of my June sales stats:


Some transactions had multiple items purchased, and only the first item shows in the list. The reason why I post proof is that in recent months people have claimed that everyone who claims to have had sales on Bonanzle is lying. And if anyone doubts the above image, run a completed items search and find the items. They did sell.

The people who go around saying that Bonanzle has no sales are probably people who have a vested interest in other sites. On at least two occasions in recent months, the owner of a certain very small and very new site made derogatory comments aimed at Bonanzle. Gee, I wonder why?

It is a fact that Bonanzle is a much smaller site than eBay and has far less traffic. Undoubtedly, sellers will get far less traffic and far fewer sales until more people hear of Bonanzle. This is the reality, but I find that I am much happier on Bonanzle than I was on eBay. I like how once I have my books listed, I do not have to think about them. I do not care if it takes awhile for the books to sell. Since I do not have to constantly list and maintain auctions, I have so much more time for other pursuits.

The number of visitors to my booth has definitely increased due to the widget placement at series-books.com, and I still have traffic coming in from Google search. Here are my sales sources stats, which are available to me because I have a premier account:

The above stats are from June 2 through July 2, so they do not exactly correspond to the provided list of sales. Additionally, the sales sources are listed by individual items, and if a transaction contained two items, then the sales source is listed twice, which is the case for the search term "nancy drew the hidden window mystery."

I fail to understand why the source for three items is Amazon. I know that those three items are three Trixie Belden books from two different transactions. Bonanzle's images are hosted by Amazon (Amazon offers a web hosting service for entrepreneurs), so the sales source data may have been affected by that. I do not believe any links to Bonanzle can possibly appear on Amazon since the links would be counterproductive to Amazon's business.

It is hard to take the sales source data and figure out which items correspond to which sources, but I can make some conclusions. 25% of my sales are from people already on the Bonanzle site (this could include some widget traffic at times). The remaining 75% of my sales are roughly split between traffic from Google and traffic from series-books.com. I cannot say for sure what the breakdown is since I do not know the true source of the Amazon stats.

When I first opened my booth, my sales traffic was from this blog. After the first month or so, most of my sales came from Google. My sales traffic is now mixed between direct, Google, and series-books.com. The increase in direct sales traffic is a good sign that more people are coming to the site to buy. Notice that one of the terms used to find my items is simply "Bonanzle." Someone went to Google with the intent to go to Bonanzle to look for items to purchase.

Here are a couple of recent positive comments made on Bonanzle by Bonanzle users:

This place is looking better ALL THE TIME!

Bit the bullet - Plus member AND dumping ecrater

I am expecting my sales to slump in July and August, since that has been the trend on eBay over the years. In August, especially, people are buying clothing and school supplies for their children. They are distracted and likely have less money to spend. Once we get past August, I expect that sales on Bonanzle will significantly increase.

Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #26

29 Titles Vintage Nancy Drew Mysteries--Carolyn Keen Item #220400517158

Here is the seller's picture:

Question: HI. Are these books from the earlier printing dates (50s - 70s ) versus the newer printing dates (80s -2004)? Thanks so much!

Answer: Hi, The books are some from the earlier dates and some from the newer priting dates, Thanks

It sounds like the prospective buyer wanted to make certain that the lot did not contain the flashlight editions, which should be obvious just from looking at the picture. The buyer might also have wanted to make certain that the lot did not contain any of the early 1980s books with the double oval endpapers. It is obvious from the picture that the lot did contain some of those books. The upper edge of the text block is unstained for 13 of the pictured books. Those books are from the early 1980s, so they contain the double oval endpapers.

How (not) to Collect Nancy Drew Books

While searching Google in a attempt to figure out something about the placement of a page, I ran across this article:

How to Collect Nancy Drew Books

*Sigh* Based on some of the wording, it sounds like the writer may have read my Nancy Drew guide on eBay and mangled the information. Step 2 in the list states:

Make a list of the titles and copyright years you are looking for. Carry this list with you everywhere. Books published between 1930 and 1959 will have 1930 listed as the copyright date. First editions will also have 25 chapters (books 1-34).

According to this person, all Nancy Drew books printed between 1930 and 1959 have 1930 as the copyright date regardless of which title in the series it is. Um, no.

This is what my Nancy Drew guide states:

The copyright page is the last place to look when you are trying to discover the age of a Nancy Drew book. Grosset and Dunlap very rarely made changes to the copyright page. All copies of The Secret of the Old Clock printed from 1930 through early 1959 have 1930 as the only year listed on the copyright page. From 1959 and on, The Secret of the Old Clock was printed with 1959 as the year on the copyright page.

I believe I am clear that I mean, as an example, that Old Clock has 1930 on the copyright page until 1959. The rest of the books have their corresponding original copyright dates.

I hate reading the statement, "First editions will also have 25 chapters (books 1-34)." For many people, particularly new collectors, "first edition" and "first printing" have the same meaning, the very first printing of a book. These people will think that any Nancy Drew book with 25 chapters is the very first printing. No it isn't!

The writer recommends, "Books with dust jackets are very rare. If you find one, buy it." This statement is too broad. It depends upon the age, the condition, and the price of the book. I hate reading general statements that give poor advice. There is a set of book club edition Nancy Drew books with yellow spine dust jackets for volumes 1, 2, and 3. These books and jackets can sometimes sell for above $10 each, but in general, are close to worthless.

Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #25

It appears that quite a few people are not informed about what the Applewood editions look like, thinking they are vintage books. Or, it may be that they simply do not read auction descriptions carefully.

NANCY DREW THE CLUE OF THE BROKEN LOCKET, NEW WITH DJ Item #170332476189

This is the seller's picture:

Question #1: Hi - Is this an Applewood reprint of the original? Thanks.

Answer #1: Yes it is....thanks for asking.

Question #2: What do endpapers look like- orange with 4 girls? Are there pictures inside - glossy or plain? What titles are listed on dust jacket flaps? Thanks!!

Answer #2: This book is a Apple reprint of the original.

Question #3: Several questions. Are there any glossy illustrations in the book - if so, frontispiece only or total four (3 internals and frontispiece)? What is the last book listed internally and on the dust jacket? Other series listed on back dust jacket - if so, last title listed? What format/color are the endpapers (orange, blue, nancy magnifying glass etc?) Can't see the spine symbol either. Finally are the interior text pages white, off-white, tanned etc? Sorry for so many questions but it's all very important to a Nancy collector. Thanks.

Answer #3: This book is a Apple reprint of the original. Not a vintage book,thanks for asking.

It is very clear from the picture that this book is an Applewood edition. Notice the gold border along the top and bottom of the front panel. The vintage dust jackets do not have a gold border, only the Applewood editions have it. Look at the spine. I can see the edge of the gold seal on the spine, which is another feature of the Applewood editions. Finally, the seller's title stated "NEW" and the items specifics stated that the condition was "Brand New." Vintage books are not normally described as "brand new" unless the seller is lying.

Bonanzle Update #15 + More on eBay Search

On June 20, I reported that my direct traffic to my Bonanzle booth was at 52.9%. It is now at 54.0% due to additional widgets placed at series-books.com. I created a special page that is comprised of widgets, and it was a lot of work. Here it is:

Nancy Drew Books for Sale

I got the idea from a post on the Bonanzle message boards. I have some other ideas as well.

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I noticed when adding bullet lists to a few more of my items and checking their positions in Google that many of my oldest items have a very poor showing. It appears that with regard to products that Google prefers fresh content. What this means is that it is important to edit older listings, which should give them a boost in Google.

Also, if any of you are listing on multiple sites, like Bonanzle and eCrater, Google is soon going to begin to enforce its "no duplicates" policy. What this means is that you are not supposed to list the same item on multiple sites and upload it to Google Base. You can list on multiple sites, but not the same items. Here is a discussion of this topic.

Listing Near Identical Items on Multiple Sites Now in Danger

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Keep in mind that Bonanzle is a very new site and still has glitches. The programming is done by one person. I know how much work it is just to do the raw code for a basic website, and the work involved in building a basic website is nothing compared to the work involved in building a large e-commerce site. Here is a page that lists all of the changes that have been made at Bonanzle:

http://www.bonanzle.com/home/changelist

A very important change has just been made, which is to improve the checkout process. My first customer in January nearly bailed out on me because of checkout, and I know of other cases where customers have had problems. Bill worked on the checkout for days. It sounds like it still has a few glitches, but people are reporting that the process is much improved.

Some comments have been made here about errors and the site's speed. Bonanzle does have glitches, and they can be reported here:

http://www.bonanzle.com/site_help/bug_report

I reported two glitches yesterday. One of the glitches occurs occasionally when I create new listings. The other glitch occurs when I try to edit the order of the items that appear in a widget. I have received a personal response regarding the first glitch I reported. Apparently I am the first one to report it, and I was asked to let them know if I was ever able to duplicate the glitch consistently.

If you ever have a glitch, please take the time to report it. While I am the first one to report one of the glitches, I know that customer service believed me, unlike on eBay where they tell their users to clear their cache. I know that the glitches will get fixed at Bonanzle.

Bonanzle has been adding new servers as they are needed. The site's growth has been rapid, so it is hard for the servers to keep up. I have noticed some spotty slowness in the last week, so another server is likely needed.

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I know that some people are still having great success at selling their series books on eBay. The fact that some of us have left has no doubt helped those who remain. I do question how much longer eBay will remain viable for those who remain. I am aware of how much some people pay for their series books since I know their alternate IDs. I am not going to out anyone's alternate ID nor will I mention any seller by name.

Some of these sellers are selling their books for very narrow profit margins. I question whether the additional exposure on eBay is worth the high fees. When I figured out what my eBay fees would have been for the items I have sold on Bonanzle, I was shocked that the fixed-price final values fees are 15% for the books category. That is horrible!

In January, I decided not to list any more individual books in auctions on eBay since the fees were too high, and my books were not selling. At that time, I did seriously consider changing to the 30-day fixed-price format, but I was unconvinced that my books would get noticed.

I decided to switch to Bonanzle where I would have no upfront costs and lower final value fees. Yes, my books might get potentially more exposure on eBay, but I am unconvinced that the fees paid to eBay for the additional exposure would make the exposure worth the cost. I am not certain whether the books really do get additional exposure on eBay. Really, I mostly ignore the fixed-price listings on eBay.

After the recent change to new search, I am not certain that most items will get noticed. I have also figured out this week that any item whose product description mentions Nancy Drew will get returned in a Nancy Drew search. For instance, Motor Mouth by Janet Evanovich is returned in a Nancy Drew search because an industry review states, "[Alexandra] Barney is Nancy Drew in a pink lace thong, with a studly NASCAR driver standing in for Ned Nickerson." Why is eBay doing this to us? The more irrelevant listings that are returned, the less likely that the good books will be spotted.

I tried to figure out whether clicking on the subcategories would help my search experience. This morning I ran my usual search for Nancy Drew. I then clicked on each subcategory, "Children's Books," "Antiquarian and Collectible," etc., and perused the results. The antiquarian and collectible category was great, but I was missing so many of the other results. The children's book category was less relevant overall, but many good books were there. I found fiction to be where all of the Motor Mouth books were, but a few scattered good books were listed there as well. I checked nonfiction, and surprisingly, some collectible Nancy Drew books were listed there. Some sellers just do not get how to categorize their books.

I found it more time-consuming to search by individual categories, so I plan to search as usual with all of the books, relevant or not, thrown in together.

More on Search Aggravation

This is worth reading:

eBay's New Search Slowing Buyers?

Also read the comments. You may also want to click on the links to the various discussions on eBay's message boards. If you read some of the complaints, eBay is telling people to check their browser settings, clear their cache, etc., which is why I refuse to report my glitches. The people at eBay think that all of the problems on their site are our fault and not theirs.

I am having some of those problems as well. For instance, I have auctions that I know I have clicked on and viewed because I placed the items in my watched items list. Yet the next day when I search, those links no longer show as being already visited. This is yet another example of eBay wasting my time! In some cases I know at a glance that I have already viewed the items, but in other cases, I end up wasting time by clicking the links again.

Read the discussion here. One person was told by eBay that it is not possible to fix the problem. I cannot state what I think without cussing, so I have no comment.

I had a few items for sale the last week. These were the first items I listed after everyone was forced into the new search. I had four items for sale. One item had one watcher, and the rest had none. Two items sold at the opening bids. The items had very few page views. Last year at this time, sales were great. Of course part of it had to do with one buyer who was buying everything, but many other people were also bidding and purchasing. We should still have the other people around, yet eBay is like a ghost town.

What I want to know is whether any of you are having problems with search? Most particularly, if you still sell on eBay, how are you doing since June 10? I want to know whether you have noticed a significant difference in your page views, watchers, and bidders since June 10. If you have had a change since June 10, the culprit is search. I hate the new search, and I almost don't want to say it, but I am beginning to hate eBay. All this time that I have complained, I have been annoyed, frustrated, and disappointed in eBay... but I have not hated the site.

A Mystery Is Solved... or Maybe Not

Most series books have a few typos in them. Since the books were made and sold inexpensively, the books did not have much quality control. Usually the mistakes are not too bothersome. One exception is the glaring error—really, a discontinuity—that occurs in the final two volumes of the Brownie Scouts series.

When I first read the Brownie Scouts series, I was utterly flabbergasted that Veve McGuire's name changed to Vevi McGuire in volumes five and six. If the mistake had been in a few stray places, I would have been forgiving. However, the name is consistently Vevi every single time it is mentioned throughout all of volumes five and six. The name is Veve in all instances from volumes one through four.

It is truly bizarre. In the documents that I purchased, a letter from Cupples and Leon mentions the problem.

We have been proof-reading the Brownie Scout Series for errors in the text which we intend to correct in the next edition. We are distressed to find that in volumes five and six the name of one of the characters had been changed from Veve to Vevi McGuire.

Actually this should be corrected - however, if we tried to do so the last two volumes in the series would need to be reset. This would be a great expense and we wish to avoid doing so if we possibly can. Do you think you could write an explanation - a story about a little girl - perhaps a friend of yours - whose name was Vevi and spelled in this manner - and to please her you had made the change starting in volume five - if so this could be inserted just before page 1, it might serve sufficiently so that we will not need to reset those volumes.

The books were not reset nor was a message about the name inserted into either of the books, at least not in the copies which I own. When I first read this letter, I concluded that the publisher had made the mistake. Even so, I was still puzzled. Exactly how would the name Veve be changed to Vevi in every single instance throughout two books? I know little about the specific details of the publishing process, but I assume that the author's manuscript is used at the beginning of the process. If the name was spelled correctly in the manuscript, how would it accidentally get changed in every occurrence throughout the final published work? The name would get changed if whoever set the type decided to change it, but that would be odd.

Although the name change still bothered me, I did not think much more about it for around a week after reading the letter. When I began looking through my documents again, I happened upon the outline for The Brownie Scouts and Their Tulip Show, which was published as the sixth volume in the series, The Brownie Scouts at Windmill Farm. Prepare yourselves for this . . . it is really shocking . . . the name is Vevi in the outline! Mildred Wirt Benson is the person who inexplicably changed her character's name from Veve to Vevi. It was never the publisher's mistake.

I now know where the mistake was made, but I still do not understand why. Surely Benson had not forgotten how to spell her own character's name? Maybe she decided she liked Vevi better, but for the sake of consistency, one would think she would have left the name alone. Perhaps she was writing so many books at that time that she forgot how she had spelled the name. This is a mystery that will never be completely solved.

Saved Searches Aggravation

I stated in a previous post that I could not edit my saved searches on eBay. I cannot edit them from any browser or through any means. The only way I can change them is to enter all of the parameters from eBay's search page and select the option to save my search. I then have to tell it which search to replace. It is very annoying.

I have no intention of telling eBay about the problem. They would tell me to clear my browser's cache as I must be the only person in the world to have this problem. Even if they were to believe me, it would take them months to fix it, and I would still have to find a workaround to the problem.

I had to revise my Nancy Drew searches. I knew that my search results were returning far more items than what the old search did. (Old search, I miss you so much. :( ) I realized what the problem was when I saw results from a seller that I knew I had blocked earlier this year. Sigh. Apparently we can block only ten sellers. The last part of my list of blocked sellers was stripped from the new search. Is this eBay's way of making certain that we have to see the listings of most of the diamond power sellers?

I had to search this blog to find my list of blocked sellers since eBay had changed it. I then took each seller's name from the list and entered it into the seller search function. A few of the sellers have left eBay, so I removed them from my list. Most of the sellers are still listing items, so I checked to see how many Nancy Drew books they have listed. I ended up with nine sellers left in my list.

This is my new blocked sellers list:

buy,ggiezgg,keen_northwest,the-video-bin,bacobook,h4book,
powells_bookstore,massbookstore-online,snowlionbooks

It is important that I have copied and pasted this list here in case I have to do this again. I can see my blocked sellers when I place my cursor over the list on the search results pages, but I cannot copy and paste from that page. I cannot access the edit function for my saved searches, so I cannot get to the list that way. I am so glad that I had saved my list to this blog in recent months!

Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #24

This is another example of a buyer not knowing that certain books must contain the original text.

Lot 7 VINTAGE Nancy Drew books most w/ dust jackets Item #230347387714

Here is the seller's picture:

Question: can you give copyright years and number of chapters of each with additional pics?

Answer: The Bungalow Mystery-c 1930, 25 chapters The Secret at Shadow Ranch- c 1931, 25 chapters The Secret of Red Gate Farm- c1931, 25 chapters The Clue of the Leaning Chimney- c 1949, 25 chapters The Mystery at the Ski Jump- c 1952, 25 chapters The Clue of the Velvet Mask- c 1953, 25 chapters The Haunted Showboat- c1957, 20 chapters

From the picture, I can tell that Bungalow Mystery is a solid blue book, and all solid blue books have the original text. The remaining books are tweed. Shadow Ranch, Leaning Chimney, Ski Jump, and Velvet Mask were never revised in the tweed format. Those books must have the original text. Haunted Showboat has only 20 chapters, but it never had 25 chapters in the first place, so it is the original text.

The only book that the buyer needed to ask about was Red Gate Farm. Most people who have not seen many Nancy Drew books would not be able to tell that it must also have the original text. The reason I know that the book must have the original text is because the revised text tweed books, #1, 2, 3, 4, and 6, tend to be less thick than the earlier tweed books and are not a bright shade of blue like the book pictured in the auction.

Private Offers on eBay

This topic has come up lately in the comments section of this blog. Here is one of our discussions. The way it works is that someone offers a seller a price that is substantially higher than the opening bid but substantially below the true value of the book. If the seller is foolish enough to take what appears to be an excellent offer, the buyer gets the book at a bargain and the seller loses out.

Recently, a seller came to the eBay Booksellers board after receiving an offer for $2,500. The book was at around $700 at that time. Previous to the $2,500 offer, the seller had received a $750 offer. The seller was seriously considering closing the auction early in order to accept the $2,500 private offer.

PLEASE HELP ~~Rare book, offer $2500, what would you do?

The seller was worried that the book might bring only $1,000 instead of $2,500 and was afraid to lose out on the guaranteed $2,500. Several people stated that in cases like this, the books always close at higher prices than the amounts of the early private offers.

RARE signed This Side of Paradise F Scott Fitzgerald NR

The seller wisely refused the offer, and the book closed at $5,355. The $2,500 offer was less than half of what the auction brought.

This tactic has been used with series books, but normally, it is only used for the scarcest ones. I have frequently seen auctions closed for dust-jacketed first printings of the first seven Nancy Drew books. It has sometimes happened with the last titles in certain series, such as Judy Bolton and Vicki Barr.

I do not believe that it happens very often nowadays for last titles in series because the value has mostly collapsed, due to eBay's folly and the economy. I have seen some surprisingly low prices for scarce books in just the last couple of weeks. For those auctions, people were better off placing lowball bids than making private offers.

Increasing Traffic to Bonanzle

I continue in my quest to drive traffic to Bonanzle. I placed widgets on additional pages at series-books.com. This time I created a widget that contained books from nearly every category in my booth. I placed that widget on some pages that did not already contain a widget. I am targeting the main pages of the subsections of the site. I still have many pages that do not contain widgets, but the Bonanzle presence on the site is increasing.

I explained in a previous post that the widgets count as direct traffic to Bonanzle. Back in January and February, my direct traffic was around 20% to 30%. As I have been adding widgets to series-books.com, my direct traffic has increased. On June 7, I reported that my direct traffic was 50.2%. As of today, my direct traffic is 52.9%. I still get traffic from search engines, but I now have a large amount of traffic coming off of series-books.com. This is important since many of the people who go to series-books.com are looking for books to buy.

Here are the top 11 most visited pages on series-books.com for the last month:


The main page is #2 on the list. It along with the Nancy Drew (#1) and the Sweet Valley High (#3) pages receive a huge number of hits as compared to the rest of the site.

I now have widgets on 10 of these pages. It is vitally important to get widgets on as many of the most popular pages as I can. I placed a widget last night on the main page of the Sweet Valley High section. It should generate a large spike in traffic for my booth. I do not expect the traffic to convert into sales, since I suspect that most visitors to the Sweet Valley page are not that interested in vintage series books. What I do hope is that the Sweet Valley High traffic will visit my booth and then enter something into the search bar at the top of the screen. More links to Bonanzle will generate more traffic and more sales.

Comparing the Fees

I decided to compare my Bonanzle fees to what my eBay fees would have been. I can never know for certain what the difference actually would have been since so many factors are unknown. What I can be sure of is that my eBay fees would have been higher than what I can possibly know for certain.

I used my sold items list at Bonanzle and compared the fees on those items to what I would have been charged for them on eBay. By doing this, I did not figure what my costs might have been for all of the items that I might have listed that might not have sold. This is why I am certain that my eBay fees would have been higher since I certainly would have listed items that would not have sold.

I decided to compare the fees by using the fee structure for eBay's fixed-price format. I have never used the fixed-price format on eBay since I have always preferred auctions. After my spectacular failure at auctions during the final week in December, I knew I had to make a change. I went over to Bonanzle since I was so soured by eBay. If I had not gone with Bonanzle, I would almost certainly have switched to the fixed-price format.

This is what the difference in fees is for my sold items on Bonanzle as compared to what my fees would have been on eBay:

January:

Bonanzle — $7.00
eBay — $29.23

February:

Bonanzle — $11.50
eBay — $49.18

March:

Bonanzle — $9.50
eBay — $33.87

April:

Bonanzle — $14.50
eBay — $55.78

May:

Bonanzle — $23.50
eBay — $133.61

The grand total for Bonanzle is $66.00, and the grand total for eBay would have been $301.67. I saved 78.1% by selling my books through Bonanzle. As already stated, I have saved more since I would have listed items on eBay that would not have sold.

Late last year, I stated that it was not worthwhile to sell books for under $15.00 on eBay. My opinion is now that it is not worthwhile to sell any books on eBay except for cheap bulk lots (to move them quickly) or very scarce books that will do well in auctions.

I recently bought a Marjorie Dean book which has a dust jacket. I won the auction at $27.79. I was willing to pay more. I would have grabbed the book in an instant if the seller had listed it at a $50.00 Buy It Now. I may have taken it at an even higher price. I have trouble resisting Buy It Now listings when I really want the item. The seller would have been better off listing the book at a fixed-price. EBay has finally destroyed its auctions.

I have been watching several sellers for months, wondering when they would finally begin to change how they list their books on eBay. I now see that one of them has switched from auctions to 30-day fixed price. The low sell-through rate of auctions combined with the prohibitive fees have forced another seller to change tactics. I am surprised it did not happen sooner.

Some sellers are still stubbornly sticking to the seven-day auction format. I just noticed one seller who has 60 completed listings. Only 14 sold. In my opinion, that is an unacceptable sell-through rate, especially considering what the fees were for all of the items that did not sell. I have to wonder why the seller keeps at it. When will the seller decide to try something new?

Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew #23

I have not done one of these posts since December. I have some closed auctions in my watched items list on eBay, and I will cover some of those in the coming days.

These posts are inspired by prospective buyers' questions that I see in various Nancy Drew auctions on eBay. I use the title "Buyer Confusion on Nancy Drew," but it is more a lack of buyer research than anything else.

Whenever I decide to collect another series, my first task is to research the series as best I can. I obtain a list of titles, and I research the publisher and the author and try to figure out which formats are available. Since I am now collecting very obscure series such as Grace Harlowe and Marjorie Dean, I am going on very limited information, but I have armed myself with as much information as I can find. Additionally, what I already know about other series applies to the obscure ones, so I have a good idea how to proceed.

What amazes me is how many people decide to collect Nancy Drew books and try to buy on eBay having completed very little research. They clearly have done some research, since they know that they want the original 25 chapter texts. Their questions indicate that while they have some basic information, they have not viewed this series of posts nor have they viewed my formats page nor my page about the original texts. It continues to frustrate me how much time these people waste asking unnecessary questions when the research is so easy. Nancy Drew is not an obscure series like Grace Harlowe or Marjorie Dean. It is very easy to find substantial useful information about collecting Nancy Drew books and how to tell by sight whether a book contains the original text.

Here is a good example:

Nice Lot (5) Vintage Blue Cover Nancy Drew Books -Keene Item #160340606402

This is the seller's picture:


It contains all of the information we need to know in order to tell whether the books contain the original text.

Question: can you show more pics re: all books and how many chapters do each have? are the listed copyright dates the original for these listed books?

Answer: Thanks for your interest. The listed copyright dates are the only dates listed in the books and judging from the years I would say they were the originals. Chapters and total pages are: Missing Map, 25 Chapters-213 Pgs; Velvet Mask, 25 Chapters and 211 pgs; Tolling Bell, 25 Chapters and 213 pgs; Wooden Lady, 213 pgs; Old Album, 25 Chapters, 218 pgs. Please send me your e-mail address and I can send more pictures. Good Luck & Happy Bidding!!

First, the books from this auction are all either blue or tweed books. All blue books contain the original 25 chapter texts—no exceptions. For the tweed books, the only books that were ever revised were #1, 2, 3, 4, and 6. The auction did not contain any of those titles. Therefore, I know from the above photo that all five books must contain the original 25 chapter text. It is not necessary to ask. I have this information on the page about the original texts which I mention further up in this post.

The buyer asked the seller whether the copyright dates were the original ones, and the seller did not know. Please refer to this page to see a list of the original copyright dates. For the 34 titles listed in the first section of that page, if the books have those copyright dates, they must contain the original 25 chapter text. The seller did list the copyright dates in the description, so even without the photo, there was no doubt that the books contain the original text.

I now fully understand why the Applewood editions have become so valuable. It is not so much that the books are nice but that uninformed buyers know that the Applewood books contain the original text. People who have done no research can be certain that they are buying books with the original text when they buy the Applewood editions. That is the reason.

How to Increase Traffic to Bonanzle

I recently realized that direct traffic to Bonanzle includes widget traffic. I originally thought that widgets placed at series-books.com would count as traffic from series-books.com in my Google Analytics account. As my direct traffic percent increased and my traffic from series-books.com decreased, I realized that the widgets count as direct traffic. The best way to explain it is that the widget itself is coded as a piece of the Bonanzle website, and it is placed on an outside website. Whenever someone clicks on any part of the widget, Google tracking counts that click as occurring on the actual Bonanzle site even though it came from outside the site.

The only link to Bonanzle at series-books.com that counts as a link from series-books.com is the Bonanzle logo that appears at the top of my main page. The same is true for the Bonanzle logo link that appears at the right side of this blog.

I have been looking at the Google Analytics data for my booth. The goal is to increase traffic, and I have been trying to determine how much my actions have affected my traffic. The main problem is trying to remember when I did which action.

I have some screen captures from my Google Analytics account. You will have to click on each image in order to view a larger version that can be read easily. All of the images contain the data from late January to June 16. I did not have the tracking for the first three weeks of my booth, so that part is missing.

This is my total booth traffic:


The above graph is for all items and pages in my booth combined, and I believe it includes multiple items viewed by the same person. The overall number of hits is not much different than it was in January, although there does appear to be a slight overall increase.

The remaining graphs are for the various traffic sources. I believe that these graphs only count each visitor one time, so the number of hits is quite different from what appears above.


The above graph shows the number of visitors for all traffic sources combined. It shows a slight overall decrease in April and an increase in June.

This next graph shows only direct traffic, and it is important since it shows how my widgets have affected my traffic.

I have marked two positions on the graph. Line #1 is placed at the time when I believe I added widgets to around six pages on series-books.com, thus resulting in an increase in direct traffic. I spent several hours working on widgets from around May 29 through June 5, and I placed line #2 at the beginning of that period. I have seen a significant increase in direct traffic during June.

This last graph shows my traffic from search engines.


It has been pretty consistent for the most part. A slump occurred in April and May but an increase has occurred in June. I added bullet lists to some of my items at the start of the month, so that may have increased my traffic from search engines.

I added bullet lists to very few of my items since I remain convinced that my widgets are my most important asset. For anyone else who has an established website, you too can place widgets on your site and bring in a lot of traffic to your Bonanzle booth.

So what about those of you who do not have a website? My advice is to work to optimize your items better for Google search. I added bullet lists to just a small sample of my items. I made note of Google's placement of those items when I added the bullets and have been watching for the results since that time. I only checked to see whether the books were in the top 50 results.

Judy Bolton Seven Strange Clues tweed DJ — #10 to #9
Connie Blair Riddle in Red — #8 t0 #9
Cherry Ames Senior Nurse — #41 to #39
Judy Bolton Musical Tree tweed DJ — not in top 50 to #3
Judy Bolton Black Cat's Clue DJ — #10 to #22
Dana Girls Mysterious Fireplace — not in top 50 to #11
Dana Girls Rusty Key — #7 to #7
Outdoor Girls in the Air — not in top 50 to #36
Nancy Drew Broken Locket tweed DJ — not in top 50 to #8
Betty Gordon in Washington — #29 to #30
Motor Girls Through New England — not in top 50 to #17

The results are mixed, but the bullets gave a few items a huge bounce in position. A few items were not showing in the top 50 results, and those items bounced up rather high. I had a few stay the same, and a few went down.

My advice is to check to see whether your items rank high by searching for them on Google. If an item shows up in the top ten, leave it alone. Why risk messing the search rank up by changing it? If the item has a low rank, optimize it by adding bullet lists. Please view this post for an explanation of what needs to be done.

The Brownie Scouts in the Circus Part 3

The outline for The Brownie Scouts in the Circus is titled The Brownies and the Golden Chariot. The characters are described as follows:

Connie Williams, "Master Mind" Jane Tuttle, Veve McGuire, Rosemary Fritche, etc., members of the Brownie troop.

Miss Gordon, leader of the troop.

Jim Cardale, animal trainer

Eve Leitsall, girl bareback circus rider.

In the book, Eve becomes Eva and Mr. Cardale becomes Mr. Carsdale. The description of Jane Tuttle as "Master Mind" intrigues me. This is never mentioned in the books, and Jane Tuttle is not a very important character. It could be that Wirt meant Connie Williams, but Connie is never described as a "Master Mind," either. It is interesting that Veve's name is mentioned third, since Veve is the star of the Brownie Scouts series.

Another difference between the book and the outline is that in the outline, Connie drops her hat during the circus performance, and she and Veve go to retrieve it. In the book, Veve is the one who drops her hat and is scolded for being careless. Veve and Connie go to retrieve the hat. There are a few other minor differences between the book and the outline, but for the most part, the book follows the outline rather closely.

The Brownie Scouts in the Circus Part 2

The second Patsy and Pudge outline is very similar to the first outline, but it has been fleshed out a bit more. What makes the second outline special is that upside down on the back of one of the pages is a very rough draft of a letter Wirt was composing. The letter has some typos. I have decided to correct the typos for clarity of reading and have noted where I made corrections.

Dear Sirs:

I am enclosing a plot for a proposed tiny-tot book to be called "Patsy and Pudge at the Circus," which follows the general formula of the well known Bobbsey Twins [typo corrected] for this type of story and which I believe would go well either in the twenty-five [typo corrected] cent market or the fifty cent field.

For my past work included from ninety to a hundred published works. I write the Nancy Drew stories, the Kay Tracey, the Dana Girls, Penny Parker and have a long list of individual mystery stories under my own name and pen. I've also done considerable work for Goldsmith Pub Co in the twenty-five cent field. In the tiny-tot line, my work includes Honey Bunch (Grosset and Dunlap) and Dot and Dash (Cupples).

If you are interested in the type of story I offer, I can assure you of a well written, entertaining book suited to which I can offer either on a royalty basis or a flat price.

This letter helps date the Patsy and Pudge outline. The Dot and Dash series was published from 1938 to 1940, and the Brownie Scouts series was published beginning in 1949. This places the Patsy and Pudge outline somewhere between 1940 and 1949.

My Latest Package

I received this package on Saturday:


I had already opened the box when I took the above picture.

It is fine for sellers to reuse boxes, but sellers should turn the boxes inside out whenever a large number of markings are present on a box. I turned boxes inside out for years until I finally decided that the old boxes took up too much space, and it was too time-consuming to reverse the boxes and make them sturdy enough to ship.

The reason why boxes with markings should be reversed is that the extra markings can cause a delay in delivery, especially when bar codes are present. Notice that a bar code is present on the above box. The mail is routed using bar codes, so unrelated bar codes can cause the mail to be routed wrong, even when the bar code is from FedEx or UPS. Just think of what happens when an extra bar code is a recent USPS bar code. The package could get sent back to the seller or to wherever the previous destination of the box was.

I had a package from last year take around four to five weeks to get to me. When I finally received it, I discovered that an old USPS bar code was present on the back of the package. Most likely the package went back and forth a few times before finally arriving. I had been in communication with the seller, so I let the seller know that the old bar code probably caused the delay. Some people have posted evidence online of delivery confirmation numbers showing the back and forth trips of packages. It does happen.

This is what I saw after I opened the top of the box:


The books seem okay, but I have no way of knowing how many corners were bent during shipping. Some of the books are a bit worn, which of course was not mentioned in the description. Actually, there was no description, aside from a picture and a short statement of how many books were in the lot.

I am not dissatisfied with the transaction; it was exactly what I was expecting. I bought the lot because of one book, and I will use the rest of the books to help sell other extras that I have. The purchase was Buy It Now, and this is yet another example of how bulk lot Buy It Now transactions usually turn out. The recent package that I mentioned here in which one book was missing was another bulk lot Buy It Now. The sellers are all like-minded, and the results are very similar.

The Brownie Scouts in the Circus Part 1

As reported in previous posts, I purchased some of Mildred Wirt Benson's documents, including several outlines. Among these documents are two drafts of the outline for Patsy and Pudge at the Circus and an outline for The Brownies and the Golden Chariot. All three of these outlines are early versions of what later became the second volume in the Brownie Scouts series, The Brownie Scouts in the Circus.

One of the Patsy and Pudge outlines has some scribbled notes in pencil which are very hard to read. Patsy and Pudge's names are marked out and the scribbled notes mention "Brownies" and "Veve." For those who have not read the Brownie Scouts series, the primary characters are Veve McGuire, Connie Williams, their troop leader, Miss Gordon, and the other girls in the troop.

In the Patsy and Pudge story, Patsy Gordon lives next door to Pudge Willmore. An animal trainer, Jim Cardale, and a boy bareback rider, Elwin Leitsall, are two secondary characters who appear in the story.

Patsy and Pudge dig dandelions in the Gordons' front yard to make money for the children to buy kites. While flying their kites, the children spot a sign advertising a circus. The children plan a circus of their own. Pudge tries walking across a clothesline stretched across a pond and falls into the water. All of these events occur in the Brownie Scouts book, except that Veve is the one who falls in the pond.

The Patsy and Pudge story has an event that does not occur in the Brownie Scouts book. Pudge has to watch the baby, but he wants to leave. He tacks the baby's dress to the floor so he and Patsy can go ask a boy if they might borrow his clown suit.

Other events are also very similar to the events of the Brownie Scouts book. The children have their circus. Neighborhood boys cause a disturbance and leave when a policeman arrives at the circus. The children go to watch the circus as it unloads at the train station. A lion escapes, and the trainer Jim Cardale gets the lion back in its cage.

The children go to the circus with Mr. Gordon. While at the circus, Mr. Gordon's wallet is stolen. The circus detective thinks that the thief is likely "Pickpocket Joe." The children meet the circus rider, Elwin, who acts like living with the circus is the greatest. The next day, Patsy and Pudge get into an open box car and are accidentally carried away when the circus leaves on the train. The children are discovered later, and a telegram is sent to their parents.

The children become better acquainted with Elwin and realize that his life is very hard. Patsy and Pudge know that they are fortunate not to be part of the circus. Mr. Gordon sends a telegram stating that he will arrive later that evening to pick up the children.

Patsy and Pudge learn that Elwin has to perform a new trick that night, and he is afraid. In the margin is the note "a Brownie is not afraid," which is a quote that appears in the Brownie Scouts book.

During that night's show, the children spot the pickpocket, and the man is captured. Mr. Gordon arrives, and the children leave with him.

The Patsy and Pudge outline follows the overall same plot as The Brownie Scouts in the Circus. In the Brownie Scouts book, Mr. Gordon becomes the troop leader, Miss Gordon. Veve is something of a composite of Patsy and Pudge, and Connie takes up part of the role of Patsy. Elwin becomes a girl bareback rider, Eva, in the book.

—to be continued

Bonanzle Update #14

I mentioned bullet lists in a previous post and how I was not sure whether they were very important. I have been experimenting with bullet lists on a few listings and have been tracking the results. In one case, the item went down in Google's results, but in other cases, the item went up in the results. This was for very limited testing, so take it for what it is worth. I do think there is something to it.

Here are the links to the Bonanzle Up Wichita videos in which the bullet lists and how to best optimize your listings for Google are discussed:

Effective Title Lines Part 1

Effective Title Lines Part 2

Effective Title Lines Part 3

Effective Title Lines Part 4

Effective Title Lines Part 5

You will need around an hour of your time if you decide to watch all of the videos. I have watched them, and they do contain some good information. I cannot recall which ones contain the best information.

You can look at a few of my listings in order to get an idea of what is stated in the videos.

Judy Bolton Musical Tree

Unless I missed it, the above listing was not showing up in at least the first 90 results on Google. After I reworked it, the listing is now #3 in the results. You can see by looking at the listing what the main points from the videos are.

You are to repeat the exact title of your listing as the first line of your listing. That one line is to be in bold print. After that line, use a bullet list for the main points about the listing. For books, it is quite obvious what needs to be in the bullet list. Put the main attributes on different lines: series name, title, author, publisher, and year. You could also state whether the book is hardcover or softcover. The bullet list is not supposed to be in bold. After the bullet list, give the rest of your information.

Bonanzle uploads the first 250 characters of your listing to Google, so make sure you do not mention anything like how to pay, shipping time, etc., in the first 250 characters. That information can be placed at the end of your listing.

If you care to see other listings that I have reworked, here are a couple of examples:

Kit Hunter Homing Trail

Judy Bolton Black Cat's Clue

You have to go to "full size edit" in order to be able to add the bullet lists to your listings.

.............................................

Bill has enhanced the widgets. For me, this is awesome news. We can now customize the background color, the text, and the border. We can use any color we want. Yes! I feel like my best asset is the placement of the widgets on series-books.com. I spent a couple of hours making widgets and placing them on various pages. I did it even though the default colors of the widgets did not look good with the color scheme of the pages. As soon as Bill announced that we could customize the widgets, I changed the colors of most of mine. For most of them, I picked colors close to the colors on the pages. Here are a couple of examples:

Nancy Drew Page (upper right at top)

Judy Bolton Page (upper right at top)

There is also a selection for "blank slate" on the page to edit your widgets. The blank slate will make the background of the widget identical to the background color of your page. Here is an example of one where I used the blank slate:

Vicki Barr Page (bottom of page)

I am so excited that I can customize the widgets to match the pages on which they are placed.

New Search Update

My feeling right now is that I cannot stand the new search to the point that I want to avoid doing searches. If I do that, then I will not be buying on eBay. I guess I have to suck it up and search away.

My primary complaint is that I do not like the spacing between the items in the results. They seem too far apart. I know the spacing is of minor importance, but it is annoying to me. This is the same problem that eBay created when it overhauled the message boards and everything else in recent months.

I found a link to customize the view. I found that I could make the gallery images smaller. I don't know if reducing the size is truly a good idea, but I did it and the items are now closer together in the list. It is harder to see the items in the pictures, which is why I'm not sure that reducing the size of the images is altogether a good idea. However, the small pictures make the results look more like they did on the old search, and that is all I want. Small pictures it is. In case anyone else dislikes the spacing, reducing the image size does help.

I also just figured out that I have been defaulted back to Best Match again. Make sure when you do your searches that they are sorted the way you want. In "customize view" on the first page of your search results, select "advanced options" and make your default "ending soonest" or whatever you prefer. Uggh! I have to run my search again. I did not want Best Match.

New Item Pages, New Search

I have complaints, and the purpose of this post is to complain about them. All of the eBay cheerleaders just need to deal with it. The reason I say this is that often when I complain about eBay, a cheerleader shows up and berates me for it. I have a right to complain about eBay, since I still use it.

I was opted into the new item pages yesterday. Well, the new item pages are not that bad, but I preferred the old ones. I think the tabs are really stupid. I looked at a closed auction that I was watching, and I could not believe how many ads were at the top of the page. They took up the whole screen, and I had to scroll down to see the closed auction. Do I really need that many sample items that I might be interested in? They are useless to me since I never click on them. I am perfectly capable of browsing all of the Nancy Drew books by searching for Nancy Drew and sorting by "ending soonest." I will see any books of interest to me.

I still have to access my saved searches page from Google Chrome, which by the way, I am getting better at using. Google Chrome is an awesome browser. The problem is that eBay's new item pages are rendered oddly in Google Chrome. Take this one, for instance:

Lot of Vintage Books - Collectible - 11 Books

It looks fine in Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer, but in Google Chrome, the listing has a vertical scroll bar that is really obnoxious. This is what I mean:

I have to use the extra vertical scroll bar that is within the listing in order to view the last part of the seller's description. How idiotic is that? The first rule of web design is to make certain that websites are rendered correctly in all browsers. What is wrong with the fools who are working for eBay? What is wrong with eBay?

I looked at my own descriptions for my current and recent auctions, and they have the delightful vertical scroll bar. #%&@*!!! All descriptions that are longer than the height of the browser window will have vertical scroll bars in Google Chrome. So I use Google Chrome to avoid the problems that I have with Firefox and Internet Explorer on eBay, so eBay cooks up a problem that is unique to Google Chrome. I can't win!

It was my auction for some Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys Super Mysteries that I checked to see if it had a vertical scroll bar, so eBay's home page shows me this:

I am selling the Super Mysteries, eBay; I do not want to buy them. I know I looked at a listing for the Super Mysteries, but I was the seller. Don't you get it?

And if that is not enough....

We have all been opted into the "new and improved" search today. All of my visited links are gone, since the new search is a different URL from the old search. I will be clicking on lots of items again this week since I will not know whether I have clicked on them.

I also do not like the layout of the new search any better than I like the layout of the "new and improved" message boards or the "new and improved" My eBay. I will get used to it, but I expect it to take a week or so. I have not seen any really funky results yet, but I find the new search pages harder to read than the old search pages.

Worst of all, the new search is also messed up in Google Chrome. When I click on an item and view it, I then hit the back button and should have the page stay where I was when I clicked on the link. But no! The page remains at the top so I have to scroll down. Double #%&@*!!!

This has been a recurring problem for the new search since October 2008. It has happened at times in all browsers but not for all users. When the problem first surfaced, eBay told users that it was their fault. Too many people have had this problem for too many months for it just to be the fault of the users. Please.

Someone defended eBay on the search message board (which will be my favorite place today since I love reading all of the fallout) by saying that eBay is a large company and it is hard to fix problems. Huh? Have the programmers look at the code! I understand that the problem might be hard to fix, but it has been eight months! That is plenty of time! As the Bonanzle site is getting built, there are problems that arise, but Bill, who is the programmer of the site, gets those problems fixed within one week! EBay surely has more than one programmer, so they should be able to fix their problems in fewer than eight months!

Remember that "misery loves company," so if any of you are having problems, I would love to read about them. And if you are happy about the changes, I am sincerely happy for you. Fortunately some people like the changes. I just happen not to be one of them.

Bonanzle Update #13

Two months ago I recorded these stats for my booth:

1. Google – 44.8%
2. Direct – 22.4%
3. This blog – 10.6%
4. series-books.com – 3.0%
5. All other sources – 19.2%

One month ago I recorded these stats:

1. Google – 44.6%
2. Direct – 30.2%
3. This blog – 11.7%
4. series-books.com – 3.0%
5. All other sources – 10.5%

These are my stats for the last month:

1. Direct — 50.2%
2. Google — 30.0%
3. This blog — 8.9%
4. series-books.com — 3.2%
5. All other sources — 7.7%

Direct traffic continues to increase, which is a good trend. Direct traffic is when people are already at Bonanzle and visit my booth from wherever they are on Bonanzle.

I picked three sample listings to try the bullet list thing out on to see whether it affects the ranking of those items in Google. Supposedly Google sees the information in the bullet lists as having extra importance. I want to see whether the ranking improves for my sample items before I try it out on additional items.

Transaction Stuff

I had a question about my first printing of Nancy Drew #1 on Bonanzle. I was asked, "Are there any other titles of Nancy Drew books listed on the copyright page above the copyright date?" This kind of question really frustrates me.

The copyright page has no significance whatsoever in the determination of the first printing status for 55 of the 56 original Nancy Drew books. The only exception is the first printing of Larkspur Lane which has a really bizarre copyright page which is undoubtedly a mistake. The first printing of Larkspur Lane has this on the copyright page:


COPYRIGHT, 1932, 1933, BY
GROSSET AND DUNLAP, INC.
First Printing, August, 1932
Second Printing, September, 1932
Revised and Enlarged Edition
First Printing, September, 1933
All Rights Reserved


The copyright page of the first printing of Larkspur Lane makes it sound like a later printing. In this case, the novice collector would draw the wrong conclusion, and it is the only volume for which the copyright page actually means something.

I sent this rather detailed response to the prospective buyer of Old Clock:

The copyright page lists Old Clock, Hidden Staircase, and Bungalow Mystery. The first three Nancy Drew books were issued simultaneously in the spring of 1930, so all three titles appear on the first printing of Old Clock. The next eight printings also have the first three titles listed on the copyright page because the copyright pages were updated only occasionally. This means that the copyright page should never be used to determine first printing status for Nancy Drew books.

For Old Clock, the point that makes this the first printing is that the first post-text ad lists only eight Hardy Boys titles. The second printing lists nine Hardy Boys titles. I photographed the Hardy Boys post-text ad as proof that this is the first printing. That is the point that clinches it.

I know that my response was read, since Bonanzle marks sent messages as read, but I never received a response, and the book was not purchased. I hope I answered the prospective buyer's question.

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On the subject of buyer questions, I had a lot of 16 Dana Girls books with 2 Nancy Drew books for sale on eBay. A prospective buyer asked, "What are the 2 Judy Bolton books?" I am mystified that a buyer thought that the lot contained Judy Bolton books when I never mentioned Judy Bolton books. It is as though the buyer read "Nancy Drew" as "Judy Bolton." I even read through my description to make certain that I did not mention Judy Bolton accidentally.

What I wonder is whether eBay, in its relentless idiocy, is now showing loosely related items in its new search. Could Dana Girls and Nancy Drew books be showing in a Judy Bolton search? I am talking about listings that do not have Judy Bolton mentioned at all. I'm still on the old search, and I am not about to switch to new search early in order to test it out. The fateful day for the end of old search is June 10, by the way...

..................................................

So, I bought some books. A day after payment, I received this message:

Do you want to insure your package for another $2.75? I am not responsible if the post office loses it.

I was offended. Why is it always my fault when something goes wrong? When I am the seller, it is my fault, and when I am the buyer, it is also my fault. For those of you who do not avidly read the message boards, insurance is for the protection of the seller, not the buyer. The buyer already effectively has insurance by paying through PayPal. This is why eBay went to payment through PayPal only. All that a buyer has to do is file a claim through PayPal stating that the package was not received. Unless the seller can prove receipt with a delivery confirmation number that shows that the package was delivered, then the buyer gets a refund.

The above is what I wanted to tell the seller, but instead I tactfully stated that as long as the books are packed in a sturdy box and the address label affixed properly, then we should have no problems. The only purchases for which I have problems are the ones in which the seller uses slipshod packaging.

Book Press Trial #2

I placed some books in my book press a week ago. The books had a lot of spine slant, and I hope to sell them at some point in the near future. I think I will do better with these particular books if they have less spine slant.

I checked on the books today. They definitely have less spine slant than they did a week ago. I placed the books back in the press, and I plan to leave them in there at least a few more days and possibly a week or more.

The first time I tried the press, I only kept the books in for a few days. It is no surprise that the results are better when the books are left in the press for a longer period of time. However, the age of the books may be the more important factor. These books are not old books, unlike the books I used the first time I tried out the book press. These books have bindings that are still supple, so they are responding well to the straightening.

Bonanzle Update #12 - Part 2

It took 24 hours before my Google Base data was updated to reflect all of my hard work at getting the condition attributes set for all of my items. I finally have confirmation that it worked. To check on your Google Base account, follow this link:

http://www.google.com/base/

Log into your account. On the resulting page, you will see some interesting data listed under active items. Most likely, this will be the page that you land on. Your items are listed along with how many Google search results each item has appeared in. Additionally, you can see how many times your item has been clicked on and viewed from Google search results.

To check on your attributes, click on "data quality." On the resulting page, you will see data like this:

None of my items are missing the condition attribute so my efforts were completely successful. On the other hand, 100% of my items are missing the product identifiers, but this is not a problem since I am selling vintage books. The product identifier is the book's ISBN number, which vintage books do not have. Some of the books I sell do have ISBNs, so I could work towards getting those entered eventually. I do not consider it very important since I feel that most buyers of series books are searching by the title rather than by the ISBN number.

Bonanzle Update #12

In message threads, it can sometimes be difficult to filter through all of the disordered and disjointed comments in order to figure out the concise, necessary information that is at the heart of the issue. For instance, someone has a message thread on Bonanzle about placing bullet lists at the beginning of listings and how this is necessary in order to get better placement on Google. What I have been unable to filter out of the thread is what intrinsic significance the bullet list has.

I am not certain that the bullets are necessarily that important, which is what the thread seems to indicate. I know that what is of importance is that all of the important information summarizing all aspects of the item for sale needs to be in the first 200 characters of the item description since Google only picks up the first 200 characters. The bullets are an easy, eye-catching way to accomplish this necessary feat. So I remain unconvinced that I must use bullets until someone can provide evidence that Google loves bullet lists for the sake of bullet lists. I do know that I should probably go a step further with the first 200 characters of my descriptions.

I have figured out exactly what we need to do with respect to the new Google condition attribute requirement since someone explained it concisely and coherently in a message thread. The post that contains the best information is partway down the second page of the thread.

From Google's message:

In order to provide shoppers with the most useful information, we'll be making the "condition" attribute required starting on June 30th, 2009.

In order to keep your feeds active past this date, please remember to include the "condition" attribute for all of your items if you're not already doing so. Please include one of three values to describe your product: new, used, or refurbished.

If you have already done Bonanzle's item traits, then you probably have condition attributes, but the problem is that Google only wants new, used, or refurbished. This means that we need to change our values using Bonanzle's batch editor. I will now attempt to describe this clearly and concisely. I followed the directions in the referenced message thread, but I ran into some problems. I am hoping to help you avoid those problems.

With my next comments, I am going on the premise that we should not have more than one condition attribute for an item that is up for sale. I really do not know whether that matters, but I do not want to take any chances. I assumed that it did and went through the process that follows.

First, go to the batch editor in My Bonanzle. It is very important that you get rid of any item traits that refer to the condition of the book before you do anything else. Select "item traits." Look at your items to see whether any condition attributes are listed.


In the above image, I have an arrow pointing to where you need to look. I had already removed the attributes before taking the screen capture, so I have none listed. What you are looking for is something like "condition:Very Good."

If you do have condition attributes for any of the item traits, then click on "edit traits for all filtered items." On the resulting page, deselect the condition attribute by making it look like this:


Save your item traits and then select "search optimize."

On the resulting page, enter an attribute to remove as shown above. This was where I had the most problems. It turns out that the form is case sensitive, so the attribute must be entered precisely as it appears above. You do need the double brackets. So to remove the attribute "condition:Very Good," you must enter "[[condition:Very Good]]" in the remove box exactly as you see it in the above image. If you make the mistake of entering either "condition:Very Good" or "[[condition:very good]]" or any other variation, it will not remove the attribute. You also need to select all of the items on that page that have that attribute. Next, repeat the process to remove any other attributes you may have such as "[[condition:Like New]]" or "[[condition:Good]]."

Finally, you need to add either new, used, or refurbished for all of your items. Most of us sell only used books, so that is the attribute we will be using in nearly all cases.


Above, I have an example of how to enter the attribute for used. This last step is the easiest step, since most of your books are probably used. Select the box marked "select all," and you can get the attribute added to all of your items listed on the page. Last click on the "update booth" button under "sell" and your booth will update with Google during your next scheduled update.

If you have any problems following these directions, let me know.

Bonanzle Update #11

Here is a list of my sales for May at Bonanzle:


Sixteen transactions took place, and eight of those transactions included multiple books. The total offer amount includes shipping, and only the first item from the transaction shows in the list. Notice that most of the sales were for Nancy Drew books. As on eBay, it is easiest to sell Nancy Drew books since far more people collect Nancy Drew than other series books.

Most of the sales came through Google. A few came through my widgets at series-books.com, which pleases me greatly. I finally will have the time this month to spend promoting my booth in the way that I want, and I plan to work on greater placement of my widgets at series-books.com.

Every few days, I like to do a search for Nancy Drew on Bonanzle and then click on "sold in last year." I am checking to see whether any of you are having any luck selling your books. I am pleased that several of you have sold some books.

If any of you would like to share your successes, I'd love to hear them.

............................

On a related topic, many people have reported low or no sales in whichever venue they are using for whatever items they sell. For some people, it is Bonanzle, and for others, it is their eBay stores. I feel that series books are nearly "recession proof." Ever since I began selling series books in late 1997, the books have always sold, regardless of the state of the economy. The only time I noticed a really steep drop in interest was immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks. Everyone was quite distracted at that time. After around a month or so, sales picked right back up.

Nearly all people who collect and read series books do so for the nostalgia and to escape from the problems of life. Since people use their favorite series books to escape from their problems, the books continue to be a desired commodity even in hard times, and perhaps especially in hard times.

The books are selling as well as ever on eBay. The books are selling on Bonanzle. The books will sell regardless of where they are listed. The only series books that are a hard sell right now are the pricey ones, but even some of those books are selling.

Incorrectly Numbered Nancy Drew Dust Jackets

In 1950, Grosset and Dunlap revised the dust jackets for ten Nancy Drew titles, #1 through #9 and #11, changing from the white spine dust jackets to the wraparound dust jackets. The first wraparound dust jackets for all ten volumes list to Wooden Lady on the front flap. A mistake was made with the first printings of the revised dust jackets for #2, 5, 8, and 11. These four jackets each ended up with the wrong number on the spine. Hidden Staircase had #8 on the spine; Shadow Ranch had #11 on the spine; Mysterious Letter had #2 on the spine; and Broken Locket had #5 on the spine.

As soon as the incorrect numbers were noticed, the numbers were hole-punched from the spines of the dust jackets. The mistake was caught so quickly that very few of the the dust jackets with the incorrect numbers made it into circulation. I estimate that around 90% to 99% of the surviving dust jackets for the first wraparound printings of these four volumes are hole-punched. It is rare to find one that is not hole-punched and that actually has the wrong number on it.

Farah's Guide assigns the hole-punched jackets for these four volumes a value of $120.00 each. He assigns the incorrectly numbered jackets a value of $300.00 each. Keep in mind that the Farah's Guide value is for dust jackets that have minimal wear and chipping. Even so, I disagree with Farah's assessment of the values of these dust jackets. He assigns all four volumes the same value; yet, the four jackets do not show up with the same frequency. Since scarcity factors into the value of a book, the four jackets should have different values since they are unequally scarce.

I have had all four hole-punched jackets for years. It was easiest to acquire the hole-punched Mysterious Letter. In fact, I have had a number of extras pass through my hands. I feel like the hole-punched Mysterious Letter is only worth around $50.00 or so, not the $120.00 quoted in Farah's Guide. The hole-punched Hidden Staircase is a little harder to find, but it is somewhat common as well. Shadow Ranch and Broken Locket are the two hardest to find hole-punched jackets, so these two are the ones that are worth the most.

There is also an interesting anomaly in which many mid-1950s tweed copies of #8 with hole-punched jackets have shown up over the years. I have had several of these in my possession at one time or another. A bunch of the hole-punched dust jackets for Mysterious Letter were probably laying around someplace and were placed on a bunch of tweed books in the mid-1950s. It was hard for me to get a #8 hole-punched jacket that was actually matched up with the correct blue silhouette endpapers book.

The incorrectly numbered dust jackets are much harder to find than the hole-punched ones. Hidden Staircase with the #8 on the spine is unquestionably the easiest one of the four to find. Make no mistake that it is very scarce, but I have one in my collection and have had two others pass through my hands. I would not quite call it rare. In my opinion, the incorrectly numbered Hidden Staircase is probably worth around $150.00, not the $300.00 quoted in Farah's Guide.

The remaining three incorrectly numbered dust jackets are extremely elusive and brutally hard to find. I cannot state which of the remaining three is the hardest to find, although I have my suspicions based on which ones I own. The incorrectly numbered jackets for #5, 8, and 11 just about never come up for sale, so when one does, it must be grabbed regardless of condition. The incorrectly numbered dust jackets for #5, 8, and 11 are easily worth more than the $300.00 quoted in Farah's Guide, provided that they are in excellent condition, due to their extreme scarcity.

I mentioned this auction win of mine in a comment a few days back:

1932 Nancy Drew Nancy's Mysterious Letter HBDJ ERROR? Item #330331955788

The auction was for Nancy's Mysterious Letter with #2 on the dust jacket and closed at $153.51.


While the dust jacket is a bit tattered, I had to have it since I had no idea when I would ever have another chance to get an incorrectly numbered Mysterious Letter dust jacket. I have been looking for these dust jackets for 12 years.

While I have all four hole-punched dust jackets, I only have the incorrectly numbered dust jackets for Hidden Staircase and Mysterious Letter. I almost have an incorrectly numbered dust jacket for Shadow Ranch. Check it out:



The hole missed the first digit of the 11, so this is why I kind of have an incorrectly numbered dust jacket of Shadow Ranch. While the jacket is just the hole-punched version, it is like a deluxe hole-punched version. It will have to do until I someday find an intact 11. Did you know that every single time I get a hole-punched jacket that I check the reverse side immediately just in case the punched-out part is clinging somehow to the jacket? I've never had any luck, but I am ever hopeful.

Closed Polls - eBay and Sleuth Friends

Two polls recently closed:


In this first poll, I asked whether people prefer sleuths who sleuth alone or with friends. 10% prefer sleuths who sleuth alone; 70% prefer sleuths who sleuth with friends; and 20% have no preference.


In the second poll, I asked how happy buyers and sellers are with eBay. The seller response was not surprising. Of the 44 people who responded to that part of the poll, 11% are happy, and 89% are unhappy.

The buyer part of the poll surprised me a bit. I have been an unhappy buyer for several years, but I thought that I was in the minority. While I am in the minority since more buyers are happy than unhappy, far more buyers are unhappy than I realized. I now know that I am not alone in how I feel. 61 people answered the buyer part of the poll. 59% are happy, and 41% are unhappy.

A Little about Patsy and Pudge

I have skimmed through the outline for Patsy and Pudge at the Circus, and it reminds me a lot of The Brownie Scouts in the Circus. I will have to re-read The Brownie Scouts in the Circus to verify the similarities. I also have several of the Brownie Scouts outlines, so it looks like I may have to re-read all of the Brownie Scouts books in order to fully appreciate these outlines.

It is very good that the outlines are for the Brownie Scouts series rather than Wirt's Dan Carter series. I do not particularly care for the Dan Carter series. In the Dan Carter series, the boys are continually forced to prove themselves innocent of wrongdoing and are overly concerned about doing the right thing. It was a bit repetitious for me, and I do not care ever to read the Dan Carter books again.

On the other hand, the Brownie Scouts series is surprisingly good for a series that centers around scouting activities and is aimed at young children. I tend not to like series that are aimed at young children, like the Bobbsey Twins series, so it is unusual that I like the Brownie Scouts series as much as I do.

A rough draft of a letter to the publisher is also included with the Patsy and Pudge summary. It was on the back of another page, and I was surprised to find it. The letter indicates to me that the Patsy and Pudge summary must be from the 1940s and must be from before the Brownie Scouts series was published. In the rough draft of the letter, Benson actually mentions that she writes (she stated "I write" - present tense) "the Nancy Drew stories." This is a gem. I will place excerpts of the letter in a future post. This is so exciting. Gosh I wish I could have purchased all of those documents...

The Indian Mound Mystery

One of the sets of original Mildred Wirt Benson documents that I purchased was the outline for a book called The Indian Mound Mystery. While I have not read every single one of Mildred Wirt Benson's published works, I feel like I can safely rule out the very few that I have not read. For the record, the only ones I have not read are Sky Racers, Carolina Castle, Courageous Wings, Linda, Connie Carl at Rainbow Ranch, and the Honey Bunch books.

Here are the characters, as described in the outline:

Rance and 'Rene Caldwell, children who are visiting their uncle,

John Spranger, a bachelor....a writer of historical novels.

Jean Romanes, an orphan who runs a quick lunch room. She is a direct descendant of Eugene Romanes.

Jack Hardley, Jean's cousin.

Robert Quittance, a lawyer, who has a fine collection of antiques. He is interested in adding to his collection by fair means or foul.

Judge Van Wenter, a kindly man who assists John Spranger in his research work.

--------------
The Eagle or Jewel of the Cincinnati. ....The order was formed by the officers, French, Polish and American, who fought together during the Revolution. George Washington was its first president. The eldest son of a dead officer could step into his father's place in the organization.

I like the description of the Jean's cafe as a "quick lunch room."

I'm going to give a short rundown of the plot. The outline has no dialogue. This would have been fleshed out as the book was written. I have tried to rephrase everything so as to use only my own words, and I have left out some of the plot.

...................................

The children's names are Ranceford and Irene Caldwell, and their nicknames are Rance and Rene. Their parents have gone away on a trip, and the two children must stay with their uncle, John Spranger, who is reluctant to take care of them. He is afraid they will distract him from his writing. Additionally, Uncle John's housekeeper, Truda Hausfenger, is displeased about the extra guests. Hmm...a housekeeper with a foreign-sounding name. It sounds like one of the famous ethnic stereotypes of old series fiction!

The children are asked to help remove some old wallpaper in Uncle John's house. As they finish the job, the children find a hidden door to a closet which contains an old chest. In the chest, the children find two diaries, one belonging to Robert Spranger. The diary contains a letter written by Eugene des Romanes.

The children visit the nearby Indian mounds. While there, Rance looks around while Rene reads the diary. She finds mention of some missing object and a partial clue to its whereabouts. The children return home to find that Uncle John is going on a trip to do research for a new book. The children go with him to an Ohio river town.

Soon after arriving in the town, the children meet Robert Quittance and Jean Romanes. From Jean, the children learn of a missing pay chest. Jean tells them that she has some papers in a trunk which may be of interest to their uncle. Jean is not able to get to the papers at the present moment.

The children meet Jack Hardley, Jean's cousin, and find him to be very unpleasant. Rene had brought the old diaries with her on the trip and left them in a briefcase. During the night, an intruder, who is later found to be Jack Hardley, tries to steal the diaries. He does not succeed.

Jean goes to retrieve her papers from the trunk and learns that some of them are missing. The Eagle of the Cincinnati, which is kind of like a locket, is on display at the library and Jean, Rene, and Rance go to look at it. They find a clue inside, and the words seem to fit with the words in the diary.

Rene learns that Judge Van Wenter had given Mr. Quittance a map of the Indian mounds. The judge draws a map from memory for Rene. Meanwhile, Jean learns that her cousin and Quittance are in collusion to find the pay chest. The two were seen driving in the direction of the Indian mounds.

The children arrive at the mounds in time to see Jack and Quittance discover the chest. They leave to get help, but the police will not believe them. Fortunately, Uncle John arrives in time to lend assistance. The chest is opened in court, and the judge determines that the money belongs to the government. Quittance is discredited in the eyes of the townspeople, and Jean returns east with Rene and Rance.

...................................

The outline was good, and I feel like this story could have made a good book. The outline is five pages long in single-spaced type. In its present form, it makes for a good short story, though lacking in dialogue.

Revisiting Quarry Ghost Part 2

I have a carbon copy of a letter Mildred Benson wrote to her editor at Dodd Mead concerning the rewriting of Quarry Ghost. The letter is dated October 3, 1958.

I have the first chapter rewritten on GHOST and am awaiting the complete manuscript. It will be possible, I think, in the early chapters to make use of the old pages, or some of them, which will greatly reduce re-copying time. The second half of the manuscript will be the trying part.

The scientific material will give the story more substance and I believe, is an improvement on the tin soldier idea. Anyway, the story is starting out with promise--and hard work!

I wish we could see the original manuscript to get an idea of how the tin soldier idea would have played out. I find it interesting that Quarry Ghost was rewritten after the original manuscript was finished. This is from a letter written by Benson's editor, Dorothy M. Bryan, on October 28, 1958:

I hope that, now it is all over, you feel the change was wise one. I would not want you to be unhappy about it. I do feel that it is better to try for a more permanent value and an underlieing [sic] substance, in addition to the entertainment aspect in our young books, particularly since over eight per cent of our sales are to institutions, such as libraries, state reading circles, school libraries, etc. I certainly do not want any author to feel "pushed around" by me, though!

It sounds like Dorothy Bryan was a nice editor.

This is from Bryan's letter to Benson from December 2, 1958:

Your manuscript for QUARRY GHOST has gone to the printer and now I can take time to congratulate you on your good rewriting. All the ends seem safely tied together. I checked on the long hair for the Ghost and the turkey egg for Cookie. Also, I straightened out any other minor inconsistencies. The only thing that I could not explain was how a group of boys could stay away from school on a weekday and huddle around the police while they were searching the quarry and not be questioned or even sent packing off to school for playing hookey!

The most important fact is that your story seems to have more substance now - your heroine more character. I think that the touch of the dinosaur egg will intrigue more readers. I know how much interest the fact that the young hero of another of our books wants to become an archaeologist has aroused, particularly in the libraries and schools.

[snip]

I think that you are going to be delighted with the jacket for your book. The artist works for the Ford Company and Coca Cola and he has made an intriguing watery scene with a flash of excitement.

The main reason I decided to read Quarry Ghost again is that I could not remember the exact details about the turkey egg or the long hair on the Ghost. As I suspected, the editor must have been checking up on whether dinosaur eggs are at all similar to turkey eggs in appearance.

Long hair is mentioned at one point in the book, but I do not know of more than one occurrence. It may be that an inconsistency was removed. For instance, it is possible that the hair could have been short in one scene and long in another.

I really enjoyed revisiting Quarry Ghost. This book is well worth purchasing, if you can find one. It was published in both hardcover and softcover editions. The softcover version, while quite scarce, is normally less expensive than the hardcover edition. The UK edition, Kristie at College, is also a relatively inexpensive way to acquire a copy.