I’m looking at ABE books for a particular used book, and one of the copies listed is described as “Very Good” and the other as “Fine”. In book-seller lingo, which is the better condition? is there a standard description of these terms?
Found it in the FAQ.
Google book grading, and you will be shocked, shocked at the results.
Joe
thanks - it looks like there’s a fair bit of wiggle room here … I may just go with the cheaper one. 
If you want to collect that book, buy the one in Fine condition, and try not to read it. If you want to read it, buy the Very Good one, or even a Good one. I wouldn’t buy a Fair book, unless I had no other choice, or if the reason it was Fair was because it was missing the dust jacket but was otherwise intact.
BTW, here’s the conversion from Amazon to ‘everywhere else’.
Acceptable = Fair
Good = Good
Very Good = Very Good
Like New = Near Fine
New = New
Very Fine = between Like New and New
FYI, dust jackets get graded separately from the book itself on ABE or other ‘book people’ sites. On Amazon, no dust jacket on a book that came with a dust jacket originally results in ‘Acceptable’.
On edit: Oh yeah, two more things:
1- Add ‘not very’ before ‘Good’ and ‘Very Good’ to convert to layman’s thinking. Good in a used book dealer’s mind is ‘not good’ in everyone else’s mind.
2- There is not 100% concordance between Amazon grading guidelines and the rest of the bookselling universe.
Not very very good?
Uh, yeah, should have said ‘not’ instead of ‘not very’ above.
My goof.
It looked like the sort of book described in library catalogues as “slightly foxed”, although it would be more honest to admit that it looked as though it had been badgered, wolved and possibly beared as well.
Terry Pratchett