When I’ve finished reading a book, I will often list it for sale on eBay.  I just don’t have enough room in my house to store all the books I read, and I find a 1-in, 1-out policy works quite well to prevent me from becoming a hoarder.

Recently, having listed six books for sale on eBay, I thought I’d just double-check that the listings were appearing on the site okay.  There they were, five of them, but where was the sixth?  I checked and double-checked but there was no sign of it.  It was a bit vexing, since it was the most valuable book of the six, and I was keen to see if it would sell.

Using the time-honoured policy I usually adopt when something goes wrong online, I decided to sleep on it, and then check if the missing listing had simply bobbed up mysteriously in the morning.

I slept the sleep of the just but, upon checking eBay next morning, I discovered that my book was still not listed for sale.

In the end, I put it down to a glitch in the system, decided to delete my original listing, and create a brand new one.  Confident this would fix the issue, I looked to see if my new listing was now appearing for sale.  But, no.  Nothing.  Once again the listing for my book had vanished into the ether. 

It was thwarting.  What could be the problem?  Why had eBay so taken agin my book?  It seemed like an innocent-enough item.  A first edition of a science-fiction fantasy novel by Leigh Brackett.  It’s title?  The Sword of Rhiannon.

Suddenly, I began to see the light.  Perhaps the word ‘sword’ was triggering some kind of security filter at eBay?  But, if so, what could I do?  It was the title of the book, I couldn’t list the item without mentioning it and, if I listed it as The S***d of Rhiannon, no one was ever going to discover it.

In the end, I decided to wait it out and let eBay’s security checks take their course, and hope that the combination of AI, algorithm and human inspection would ultimately conclude that my listing was harmless enough.

And so they did, although it took two days for the process to be completed and for my listing to finally go live.  In hindsight, I realised the worst thing I did was to delete my original listing and start again, because all that meant was that I was returned to the back of the verification queue.

It is a lesson learned, but it has made me think twice about listing my copies of Alistair MacLean’s The Guns of Navarone and Philip Pullman’s The Subtle Knife.

And as for my Beatles’ album Revolver…

© Fergus Longfellow

For any interested buyers, Fergus Longfellow still hasn’t sold his copy of The Sword of Rhiannon.