About MyBookWorth
A search tool for finding out what comparable books have actually sold for.
Why this site exists
Ask the internet what an old book is worth and you get one of two unhelpful answers: a forum thread guessing, or an automated “valuation” that produces a confident number from nowhere. Neither tells you anything you can act on, because the value of a second-hand book is not a property of the title. It is a property of this copy — its edition, its printing, its condition, whether the dust jacket survived, whether someone signed it.
MyBookWorth takes the opposite approach. It does not tell you what your book is worth. It shows you what comparable copies were actually listed and sold for, links you to each of those listings, and leaves the judgement to you. That is a smaller promise, and it is one we can keep.
Who runs it
MyBookWorth is built and run by Antonio Lopes, an independent developer based in Portugal. It is not a company, an auction house, or a dealer, and it has no commercial relationship with the sellers whose listings appear in results. That independence is the point: we have nothing to gain from telling you a book is valuable.
We are not accredited appraisers and we do not present ourselves as such. Our expertise is in building the search — collecting listing data at scale, cleaning it, and matching a description against it accurately. The domain judgement about any individual book stays with you, or with a specialist you consult.
Where the data comes from
The database holds roughly 800,000 records covering three overlapping collectible categories: books, antique maps, and antique prints. Records are collected from publicly accessible listing pages published by auction houses and online marketplaces.
We do not claim ownership of that material. Each record keeps its price, its description, and above all a link back to the original listing, so that every figure on this site can be traced to a real page published by a real seller. If a result looks wrong to you, click through and check — that is what the link is for. Rights holders who want a listing removed from the index can email us and we will remove it.
How the search works
The search looks for listings that mean the same thing as what you typed, not just ones containing the same words. That is why a search for “signed Hemingway first printing” can surface a listing that never used those exact words, and why results come back ranked by how closely they match rather than in date order.
Book Scan works the same way with one step in front: the title is read from your photo, and that title becomes the search. The photo itself is never compared against anything — only the title read from it. Our How It Works page walks through the whole flow, and our Privacy Policy explains exactly what happens to an uploaded image.
What we are upfront about
Being useful about book values means being honest about the limits, so here they are in one place:
- Records are historical snapshots. A price reflects what a listing showed when we collected it, not today’s market.
- A listed price is not always a sold price. Some records are asking prices that no buyer ever met.
- We do not verify sellers’ descriptions. If a listing claims a first edition, that claim is the seller’s, not ours.
- Similarity is judged by software, not by a librarian. A high score means the descriptions match closely, not that the copies are equivalent.
- Coverage is uneven. Common paperbacks are thinly represented; rare and collectible material is where the database is strongest.
Before acting on any figure, work through the evaluation checklist. Edition and condition routinely matter more than the headline price.
How the site is funded
MyBookWorth is free to use and carries no paywall. It is funded by display advertising and by affiliate commission on some outbound links. Neither influences which results a search returns or the order they appear in — ranking comes from how well a listing matches your search, and no seller can pay to appear. The full detail is on our advertising and affiliate disclosure page.
Contact
Corrections, takedown requests, privacy questions, or a result that looks plainly wrong — all of it goes to [email protected]. We read everything, and correcting bad data is genuinely useful to us.
Last updated: 29 August 2026. See also our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.