Used book pricing question

Question:
Does anyone know how used books are usually priced? Is there a "standard formula" of sorts or is it pretty variable?

I know a lady who is selling some books at a used book fair that her home school group is participating in. Anyways, she is letting me buy a few before she puts them into the book fair for sale. She, of course, wants to get as much as possible for them. I don't want to be cheap about it, but I also don't really want to pay full price for a used book. Any hints or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Answer:
-Probably depends on the area, but people wanting full price haven't been in the used book business long :). [Also supply and demand varies the price of course] Probably from half price to 10 cents on the dollar [but that's more garage sale price]. *well, that was clear as mud - basically what the market will bear.* -The problem with used books is that at the extremes they have almost no value (ever see a box of books at a yard sale which is marked down to $.25 for the entire box at the end of the day) but some rare books are very, very valuable.

If you don't have a wide selection, you competition is the yard sale and the library sales. There is no way a private business can compete with this.

IMHO, a carefully cataloged collection of used books is much more valuable. It is much like the junk yard business. Now, junk parts on the average are about 1/2 the price of NEW. This is because dealers trade information and move parts to where the demand it.

In used books you should try to do the same. The trouble is that cataloging books is a lot of work. If you only have one or two copies of each book you have to charge high prices just to stay in business.

If you want top dollar for a collection, you have to catalog it and only sell to those paying close to present retail value for the book ($10 UP). If you really want to get rid of a collection, you have to price is at $.25 and DOWN.