Book Flaw Terminology in Rare Books

Video Transcript

"Hi. I'm Molly Mackey with Expert Village. Now, we're going to talk about terminology for describing flaws in books. It's very important that you describe your books accurately. So, you have a happy customer. One of the most common things that you'll come across, and it really does make a difference, you need to mention it, is something called dog-eared. And, that's when people tend to bookmark their books by folding the edge over. So, when that happens and it's enough in the book to make a difference, you want to mention it. Again, it's called dog-eared. Another common thing, especially with the older books, cloth books, would be spine fray, spine tears, etc. So, when you have something like this, this is called a spine split to cloth. And, it's definitely mentionable. Also, you might want to mention that it's frayed at the bottom of the spine. These are important things that definitely need to be noted. Also, common in very old books, especially in leather bound books, are split covers. Now, you may think that someone wouldn't want something with a cover completely all the way detached, but they will. And, what you need to do is describe that as front cover detached completely. Because just detached would mean that it's barely hanging on there. So, you want to say detached completely. "