1847-The District School Reader-William Swan

(1847-Philadelphia: Thomas, Cowperthwait & Co; Cincinnati: Desilver & Burr; Boston: Little & Brown) The District School Reader or Exercises in Reading and Speaking Designed for the Highest Class in Public and Private Schools by William D. Swan, Principal of The Mayhew Grammar School, Boston. Antiquarian school text that belonged to ___ Holbrook in Stoughton, Mass (hard to decipher). There are no endpapers. First page is title page. 484 pages. Last page has words "The End." Book is in three parts. Front cover, back cover and the pages. The first 12 pages are hanging on by a thread--literally, and may well separate when I package the book up or in transit. 170 different lessons, with index of authors. Book has an old book smell that is not unpleasant. It has a more or less typical amount of foxing (spots/discoloration/stains) to pages. Looks like all pages have at least a few spots with many having heavy foxing. There are a few random pencil marks. Brown leather-covered cardboard covers that have worn down to the cardboard. A strip of the spine covering is missing. This is a 160-year-old book that has been around. It is very neat if you are a fan of antiquarian school readers. I will be happy to combo ship, but must add a handling fee for each item added to the package to help defray the cost of doing business with eBay and PayPal. IMPORTANT NOTE TO BUYERS ABOUT P&H: Most sellers have their own particular rules and regulations that they add to the bottom of their listing. I don't have any rules about payments or refunds, but I do have a large issue with the concept of postage and handling and so wish to end each listing with the following information that I hope you will take the time to read. If I can make just one buyer rethink the P&H issue, I'll consider this long paragraph a success. There are some buyers who simply don't understand or don't want to understand what costs are involved with selling on eBay and who seem to think that the seller should bear all those costs and offer the buyer an item at a bargain price with free or reduced shipping. Before you post negative feedback for a seller for charging too much for postage, (and yes, some was posted recently for me for sending two items to Germany for $5 P&H), please consider the following: While eBay encourages sellers to start auctions at 99 cents or less, offer free shipping, and donate a portion or all of the selling price to a favorite charity, it's time to really examine what that actually means. As a seller, if I did any ONE of those three things, let alone all three, I would be out of business in no time. It's time for sellers to speak up about what it really means to sell on eBay and accept PayPal payments. Briefly, listing and selling something like a postcard for $9.99 at auction (plus P&H of $1.75) will cost the seller $1.90 in eBay/PayPal fees; sell an eBay store item for the same amount and the cost to the seller will be $2.22, provided that the item sells the first month it's posted (sellers pay a monthly listing fee, not to mention a minimum of $15.95 per month to run a store, plus another $10 and up for a picture-hosting service). It's 35 cents here, 30 cents there, $15 here, 12% there, etc. and those amounts really add up quickly to the point where a typical seller owes eBay/PayPal several hundred dollars a month or between 1/4 and 1/3 of the monthly gross sales. I've been selling on eBay since 1998. If you are just a buyer and not a seller, you need to know what is involved with selling and you need to realize that it costs a lot of money to use eBay's and PayPal's services. This all brings me to the postage and handling discussion. EBay encourages free or exact shipping--of course they would. That is appealing to everyone but the seller. Most consumers understand the concept of overhead in the retail world, but apparently not with eBay purchases. We know that that $4 boneless chicken breast in the grocery store costs $20 in a restaurant because of the costs involved in its preparation and serving. Similarly, there is overhead, and a lot of it, with eBay/PayPal and I continue to be unhappily amazed at how a good percentage of buyers expect sellers to charge exact shipping and eat the overhead, because there are just enough sellers who do that who don't seem to realize just how much money they are losing and who make the rest of us sellers look like extortionists when we charge $1.75 to ship a postcard versus 42 cents exact postage. Or how about the seller who sells a new room-sized rug for $1 and charges $50 to ship and then gets oodles of negative feedback because the rug only costs $20 to ship? C'mon, folks. You've just paid $51 for a rug--sounds like a great bargain to me. Does it matter that the rug was $1 and the postage $50? What if the rug were priced at $51 and the postage free? Would that make you feel better? What difference does it make? $51 is $51, no matter how you split it up. If you think a $1 rug should ship for free or exact shipping, you are truly ignorant of how buying and selling works. If you are willing to pay $51 for a rug, it shouldn't matter how much of that is actual purchase price and how much is P&H. Stop expecting free things and deep discounts and stop posting negative feedback for what you perceive as unfair P&H. The question for sellers is how to build those hidden overhead expenses into the opening bid and still be competitive? Short answer is, it can't be done. P&H is the only place the seller can do that--that's why it's called postage and "handling." That's not a new concept for on-line purchasing. Every single business that sells product builds in overhead, either into the asking price or into the P&H or both. An eBay seller's handling includes time spent locating items, getting them ready to list (cleaning, taking photos, researching what similar items are selling for), listing, packing, going to the post office, buying packing supplies, buying gas, and all of the myriad associated eBay and PayPal fees. None of that is free and buyers should not expect it to be, nor should eBay encourage that perspective. Sure, $1.75 to ship a postcard sounds like a lot if the actual postage is only $.42, but I've just paid eBay/PayPal about $2 for that sale, so $1.75 doesn't even cover actual postage and eBay/PayPal fees, let alone the other overhead mentioned above. My handling fee only HELPS defray overhead--it doesn't pay for it entirely--not by a long stretch. Hopefully, I have provided some information that puts the "H" in P&H into some logical perspective. If not, and you still think that exact postage is what you should pay, then please do not bid or purchase my items. In this economy, everything is going up in price and eBay should be no exception. Please, let's try to make this a fair marketplace for both buyers and sellers.

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