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Used Books: An Actual Internet Success Story
theodp writes: "An Actual Internet Success Story explains how, in just a few years, the Internet has transformed the world into a huge marketplace for used books, utterly transforming a business that had gone pretty much unobserved for centuries. The Net has changed how we buy and think about books - someone in Illinois can easily buy a cheap used hardback over the Net from a New York dealer, read it and then resell it to someone in California, having spent, in effect, only a few dollars. According to the story, the increase in the number of used books sold is staggering, maybe 100 times what it was in 1995, and now accounts for more than 15 percent of Amazon's sales. Tales are told of used book dealers lining up nine hours before a library sale to get 'free money,' cutting deals with thrift-store managers and library-sale organizers to avoid 'feeding frenzy' fights, volunteering at the Salvation Army to get first dibs on donations, and offering review copies for half price on the Net weeks before a book is even published."
Ahh yes, but then the book companies can complain about the used book market stealing money from their pockets. I wonder when the selling of used books will become illegal.
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# Modus Ponens
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Three or four comic book stores in the Orlando area went out of business quickly about 2 years ago. While scrounging for stuff, I got to speak with the owners and they ALL had the same story.
They made more money in one month selling their inventory on Ebay than they did in a year selling inthe "real" world. They pointed out all the really good stuff was gone, and I wasn't going to find what I was looking for.
All were quite happy with the situation and planned to continue selling at online auctions.
A side note is that in the last week I've sold 5 books on Amazon that I no longer wanted. I got decent money, too, not like the $1 or so at a garage sale. I *HATE* throwing books out -- they need to go to a good home.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
I think that this is partially off. For the most part, it is correct that many people are able to buy/sell/trade in the "global marketplace" whereas they could not before. However, used bookstores have been around for a long long time, and they always seem to have a good selection, even in small towns. I can only see the "specialty" market actually being helped by this. Its only the lazy people who order groceries from the web and don't want to go down to the local used book store to look around.
A slip of the foot you may soon recover, but a slip of the tongue you may never get over. -Benjamin Franklin
I've been haunting used book stores for years. It's usually a hit-or-miss proposition. The mass market books are usually pretty easy to find in the local shops, but the more obscure or esoteric books are nearly impossible to find.
Amazon.com and B&N (and their associated sellers) have greatly changed that. I can find almost anything now and usually at a reasonable price. I looked for years to find copies of out-of-print and obscure books before and now it's pretty easy.
I expect it'll be a few years before we're able to get the majority of used-book stores on-line though. Most stores have far too much stock and too few resources to make that happen.
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One thing I absolutely love on the net is the chance to go someplace like Amazon, E-bay, or www.thewantad.com and find something oscure that I am looking for.
.com everything might have overloaded people with the notion that get online and you will find piles of useless companies that don't belong there, but it never really hit the sites like e-bay hard.
I have always been someone that likes to buy good stuff, but it's not always economically feasible. Of course, buying a great couch online from Oregon isn't the best idea when you live in New England, but these types of sites are there if you want to do it.
The strength of this scenario is that it is exactly the type of marketplace the net is suited for.
I guess I am saying I am a big fan of this, whether it be books or anything else. It's a great form of recycling when one man's junk becomes another's treasure.
This is because the book publishers have embraced the internet and allowed the new technology and their industry to naturally merge together into something beneficial for everybody.
On the other hand the music and movie industries seem to be doing the exact opposite. Example - Stephen King's + Scott Adams E-Books. Publishers embrace the technology and don't try to make money with lawyers. I doubt the RIAA will learn a lesson however.
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.. X has been unmeasured for centuries, but in the last n years, its gone up 100 times! Please, there is no way to do a realistic study. The best they can say is, used book sold on the web have gone up x amount since we began studying the trend.
There are many used book stores that don't report to anybody.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When I want a book, I buy it new and treat it carefully and store it in well protected conditions such that in 20 years, I can pull out the same book and it will still be in perfect condition just as the day I bought it. I have read my set of Lord of the Rings more than 3 times now and still they are immaculate. The damage and wear that multiple reads, shipping, selling, etc puts on books in my opinion ruins them. Sure, the words are still on the page and still readable. But the damage to the book undermines and disrespects both the work of the author to put together a thoughtful work of writing, the work the artists to create the cover artwork, and the whole 'book feeling' that cannot be reproduced by PDF, e-book or newspaper. And thus, when it comes to my personal reading, I only buy new books and keep them in perefect condition.
I really hate getting a used book that someone has taken a highlighter to. The light yellow/green/pink really distracts my eye when trying to concentrate. Even worse when the previous owner has a really bad highlighting technique. Far less annoying are the standard food stains/coffee cup marks, even when half the book in stained.
Anyone know of any online bookstores that at least check a few pages of used books for highlighter marks and the like, and mention if they found any in the book description?
:^)
Ryan Fenton
plus, used bookstores smell good.
and they usually have a cat.
I can't believe it's not lard!
Former AAP (Association of American Publishers) changes its name to BPAA. An AAP spokesman said, "we IP bullying trusts have to standardize on naming conventions".
Restricting used books has been tried. The example which first comes to mind is the publisher a long time ago who put a license in books which prohibited resale. Courts rejected it.
For the impatient here's an automatic registration link to the article.
if it wasn't for Ebay and Bibliofind (now part of Amazon) I never would have been able to find copies of my father's book and my grandmother's book.
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Online bookstores are great, if you already know what book you want. But, one of the biggest attractions that used bookstores have for me is the thousands of books that I've never heard of. I can spend hours in a bookstore, just browsing through the shelves - that experience is pretty hard to duplicate online.
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back in the '80s, it was said that the rise of the electronic office would dramatically cut the usage of paper in the modern office. the opposite happened!
;-P
i think it is kind of funny then that the internet, this colossal, immediate, hyperlinked textual monstrosity, should greatly increase the market for... used books!!??
so i am hereby predicting the next big media revolution will have everyone reading the saturday evening post... or life magazine... don't ask me how or why, but the precedent is clear. LOL
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is a great example of how capitalism is suppoesed to work. The system will squeeze out as much efficiency as possible from the market. A way for "recycling" these items has become avaiable and now the market has sprung up around it.
I'm sure it pisses off the book publishers, but they can join the ranks of the candle makers and buggy whip producers.
If you're buying a used book so you can read it and then resell it, what are you gaining? Why not just go to the library?
Nosce te Ipsum
Working at an Academic library I must say that this is very true. About half of the items that I see (being the cataloguer I see all of them) come in are from B&N, amazon, and other books sellers online. And if the item is more than a few years old or an esoteric (sp?) most of these are used. It has made the acquisitions department very happy these sites. And the directors too. Much more bang for thier ever shrinking buck.
"If a quarter is two bits, then a dollar's a byte." -R Deric Miller
I would love to buy things in online auctions - except that invariably, some obsessive-compulsive type halfway across the continent is willing to bid half their net worth for whatever it is I'm looking for. My upper bidding limit (and I don't think I'm being cheap) is often a fraction of what the latest top bid is...
The good thing of course, is that this benefits sellers, and thus encourages a thriving auction market. If I can't afford to bid on an item that I can't get locally anyway, I guess nobody's hurt by that. The downside, as you say is that the often financially risky proposition of running a "brick-and-mortar" physical storefront somewhere is not as compelling for would-be retailers. So collectible items like comic books etc. may become completely unavailable, except online and in very large cities. One of the two local gaming/comic shops in my city just closed down to become a strictly online business (putting at least one fangirl out of work in the process...)
Freedom: "I won't!"
There is a concept called the "Right of First Sale", which says that once someone has been sold a physical object (like a book), the seller can't tell them what to do with it. It's theirs to do with as they please.
Now, that does not give them the right to use the product to break other laws (xeroxing the book, scanning it in & posting the results to the net, etc), but if they want to use the book to wallpaper their house, there's nothing the seller can do to stop it.
This gets more complicated when you have to have a license to use what's on the physical thing (like software on a CD), but the First Sale principle is pretty well established in the US.
Why should you care? Because it means that there's no way in hell that used book sales are ever going to be shut down...they're protected by the Right of First Sale. The trading of MP3s is not protected by this, so you can expect a legal fight there.
But once books are not in print they vanish -- the publishers used to keep warehouses full of books that were 20-30 years old. But tax laws and courts changed the rules, so they could no longer could use their old inventory to reduce their taxes. Now publishers get rid of books in a short time.
...beyond helping us consume more.
Ok, so here I am, doing my PhD in Australia. It is exceedingly difficult to find *good* books in my area of study at reasonable prices. Buying a $70 book to read it in a day and find half of it useless garbage, as I did yesterday, is *very* frustrating, and rough on a student's budget. It's also frustrating to spend a month harassing the interlibrary loan clerk at the Uni library to try to track down a book that ONLY the University of Waggawaggabernong has only to hear "oh sorry, they won't loan that one out!".
I've got more than a few books - books I'll be using to draft my "original contribution to knowledge" - that, were it not for centralized used-book databases like amazon.com, I would never have found.
Amazon can make their little profit on used books and referrals - that's honest money to me. They (and others that do the same thing) provide a mechanism to share information (real, print information - there's very few good books on the net) that provides a signficant net benefit, and one that will only grow more beneficial as more academic/intellectual/literate types take advantage of it.
Nice to see ecommerce used for something other than consume-consume-consume. Even e-bay doesn't seem like recycling - well ok, not to me at least, I only seem to be able to buy stuff from it! (/me looks guiltily around at numerous silly ebay purchases)
-- "Ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge." (Charles Darwin)
...or, they ran out of space for books, or they once had a use for it but no longer do (for instance, a textbook for a course that's peripheral to his main interests).
Not that I've resold much of anything for a while -- I'm really a packrat in human guise -- but there are quite valid reasons that one might do so.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
It's not about the physical mainfestation of the book, it's about the words and thoughts and ideas the author is communicating. I'd be willing to bet most authors would rather have people share their books and re-read them and really love them than pamper them and be afraid to read it one more time for fear of hurting it.
When I read a book, I'm brutal to it, that's just my way. I fold pages and highlight things that really move me, and I really don't think the authors would think that I'm being disrespectful.
Like I said, I wouldn't ever be critical of some one like you taking great care of the book, but you really have no right to be critical of the way others treat their books.
Vote Quimby.
If this was used movies and used CD's, the various **AA's would be all over it. Can someone explain the difference between the latest book, the latest movie and the latest music CD as it pertains to property?
NO. They wouldn't be. Such things exist without harassment from the **AAs. And we aren't talking about new media anyway; we're talking about used books.
Although your post is clearly a troll, you're a little bit right. No one is contesting the sale of used stuff right now, not even the **AA...just give 'em some time. However, book publishers have attacked libraries as piracy facilitators in the past, without much luck. One thing they've found: It's a hell of a lot harder to demonize a library, paid for by the public and heralded as an educational treasure, than it is to demonize college students and the Internet.
Which makes me wonder: What if a library put together something to "check out" books, music, and videos on the Internet? Yeah, we've got a few things like it, but they're in their infancy and, to my knowledge, not a public project; they're done by one company or another. With a public library behind sharing of books/music/videos, doing what they're already doing in real life, the **AAs might have little choice but to back down.
My library (Multnomah County Library, in Portland, OR) already loans music and videos along with books. It has hookups to the Internet for anyone coming in, and people volunteer for work at the library. It's just a matter of adding these ingredients together, and we could have public filesharing...how sweet is that? I'm getting carried away...but it's nice to think about.
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TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
What if the equivalent of the RIAA and the MPAA in the book industry (what's that, the BIAA?) starts suing those who sell used books? The reason? Those who buy used books aren't paying a dime to the author of the books. It must be stealing. Right?
...yet :)
If not, what's the difference between music sharing and used books selling? That I'm giving you a *copy* of a song, and not the original one, right? But who prevents me from deleting the "original" song once you downloaded it from my pc?
...if 'original' and 'copy' has a meaning in a digital world..
ok this was joking. Obviously selling used books isn't a crime.
cheers
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
Because if you mail only published materials (books, magazines, etc.) than you pay a much reduced price.
Do other nations do this?
How long before the USPS, in an effort to gain more revinue, rids itself of the discount to mailing books?
On a side note, I get free Amazon gift certificates because of the credit card I use. I can't apply it toward used anything, but I rack up enough points to get new stuff as fast as I can read it. (I don't think this offer exists for new customers anymore... but it couldn't hurt to try/ask)
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Bookfinder used to be the king of used book searches. It would search all the other sides like Albris, Half, ABE, Amazon, B&N, Powells and others. But now it's a sad shadow of it's former self. Somehow it's data is now long outdated, like it's only updated once a month or worse.
So now you need to search all those sites manually to be sure to find a particular book.
I start with Amazon to find the book and get the ISBN, and make note of Amazon's used price.
Then I look at Half (because it's so damn easy! and I trust the eBay ratings system). Usually the best place for recent books.
Then the dreaded ABEbooks where it's a zillion little dealers, each with their own shipping rates, and method of payment. ABE is what used book buying via email and BBS used to be like (except now we have PayPal).
I was amazed to find the best price via Bibliofind even though it's a branch of Amazon. Seems Bibliofind searches ZSHOPS, while the normal page in Amazon didn't list the ZSHOP copy. The best price I found anywhere else was over $40 (for a less than 10 year old Del Rey paperback!). The ZSHOP price? $2.50! Yes! The joy of buying used.
Of course the shipping kind of kills those wonderful deals. Nothing could beat walking out of a used bookstore with huge stack of paperbacks for $20 ($1 to $2 a book). Thats how you really discover authors (and accumulate shelf after shelf of stuff you will never get around to reading).
I'm not quite as optimistic as you. While there are areas where this is a win (such as books that were previously unavailable because the only copies were buried in an unknown used bookstore), it is also cutting into the revenue for the book publishers. That's the same money that is used to encourage authors to spend their time writing books instead of writing advertising copy, flipping burgers, or working in a factory.
There are a number of ways the book industry can try and adapt. They can adjust the initial purchase price to reflect the larger average number of people reading each copy. They can cut costs through cheaper materials. They can use cheap materials to make the books fall apart sooner, making it harder to resell the books. They can focus only on the mainstream authors who always sell big numbers.
Now I'm not saying that reselling books is evil, immoral, or illegal. But it does have a potentially negative effect on the book industry, and I believe there's a good chance that that negative effect will get transferred back to the consumer.
You know, you have a great point. Last week I was looking for something and when I didn't find it on E-bay I went looking for options as far as other online auction sites go. There really are none that compete.
E-Bay has the brand, almost akin to Coke in the net auction sense. What I was wondering is if this is a good thing or a bad thing. Is there room for 2? How can we improve upon the current situation? 2 ideas I had...although they may not be the most popular, were to either have the site run for charitable purposes by an organisation such as the Salvation Army. People could donate products for auction to benefit the organization and get the tax bennies, or just pay the fee to the organisation for running the site and have the profits doing good work in the community. The other idea I had was to have the site run by the government. It would bring up the possibility of sales tax, for good or for bad, and potentially regulate international sales, again for good or for bad. The money could be used for just about any government program and could be a good step towards lower taxes in other areas. Then again it could become a useless government run agency...helping the IRS put the S in service...that kind of thing.
someone in Illinois can easily buy a cheap used hardback over the Net from a New York dealer, read it and then resell it to someone in California, having spent, in effect, only a few dollars.
I can usually walk down to the one down the street from me, borrow the one I want and return it, having spent, in effect, nothing.
Yes, not all books are available at the local library but I'll wager the vast majority of the ones being traded are. And if it isn't available at the local one, they are usually willing to get it for you within a few days.
Sadly, though, with the economy the way it is, the library system is one of the areas that my city is considering cutting back on.
Mmmm.. Donuts
Yes, this is true, and not only books, but other things as well.
I don't know about the rest of you who sell on eBay but I've noticed something over the past year or so .. everytime I buy something, I immediately think of the inevitable eBay resale.
Electronics: I will buy a more expensive digital camera because I know I can resell it later to buy the next model. Instead of collecting junk in my closet I can "upgrade" it by selling it and buying something else. I'm already anal about keeping things nice and clean and like-new, so it's no problem keeping stuff in ready to sell condition.
CDs: I used to buy lots of obscure indie/electronic CDs, but I had to pick and choose. Now, I basically buy everything on the new release lists because I know I can unload the ones I don't like on eBay (sometimes for more than I paid for those limited releases).
Books: I don't hesitate to buy the "intro" computer books (e.g., O'Reilly's Learning XML) because once I outgrow them, I can get $10-$15 back on eBay. And I might be helping some programmer who couldn't afford the full price of the new book.
It's not "the internet", it's eBay! eBay is the only Internet company that has really changed things, if you ask me. With eBay, everything can be "try before you buy".
The courts have already ruled on "first sale". Once the publisher sells the copy, they have no say over what you do with it, wether its read it and throw it out, give it away, sell it, burn it, etc.
Yeah, that makes sense. I can sell my moldy old couch (this is a hypothetical example: no one in their right mind would buy my couch) because it is, after all, mine. So I'm wondering why this doesn't apply to music in the form of mp3s over the internet? After all, I've sold used CDs to music stores before. Suppose I decide to give my CD to the store instead without payment. And then suppose instead of giving it to a store, I give it to someone over the internet. And then suppose instead of giving them a CD, I give them a lower-quality mp3. Why don't I have the right to do this?
Clearly I'm missing something here. Little help, Anyone?
GMD
watch this
That we've reached the situation where there is a sufficient concentration of idiocy, arrogance and financial interest to push for the removal or truncation of first sale rights on items that contain content, including books?
I know it sounds insane, but bear with me. I'm thinking about the Elcomsoft judge, and his assertion that because you can transcribe an eBook by hand, that satisfies the right to copy it in part for fair use rights of quotation, and in whole for eventually putting it into the public domain. So a court has said that it's both possible and practical to copy an eBook, and so by a close extrapolation, that applies (even more so because of OCR) to a text book.
So... (thinks an unscrupulous IP lawyer concerned that kiddies are actually sharing copies of Harry Potter and the Amazonian Gift Certificate or another lucrative movie tie in) if it's even easier to copy a paper book than a highly protected eBook, then why shouldn't some of those juicy DMCA criminal penalties apply to paper books?
Bear in mind that some eBooks are already tied to individual devices (my colleage has just bought a new PDA, but simply can't transfer his Microsoft licensed eBooks from his old one to the new one). They are treated as information licensed to you; you have no rights of first sale. Now, transferral of an eBook is copying of information, not a physical transfer, but look also at how hard it is to sell software on eBay. Publisher can and do have you shut down in an instant, even if you explicitely state that you are selling a boxed non-OEM copy that you have removed from your hardware. The very idea that you can own an object that contains copyrighted content is being challenged by habit and usage, and that's often a precursor to a change in the law.
I'm not saying that this will happen this year or the next. I'm thinking five or ten years, but I'm thinking that it can and will happen, after all digital content is locked down tight with mandatory DRM. I'm not proposing that it's Constitutional, or even that it's in any way workable, but that's not necessarily a bar to having a law passed that will take years of fighting up to the Supremes to have struck or modified.
I'm also thinking that it might be the issue that finally wakes up Joe Consumer regarding fair use and the balance of power in copyright, but that by then it might be too late to recover any of the rights that we've already lost to the publishers and distributors.
What do you think? Am I delusional, or am I just following the money?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Yeah,us that's pretty neat. Recently, I bought a used book about Linux kernel programming for EUR 15,--, a few weeks ago "The C++ programming language" by Bjarne Stroustrup for EUR 10,-- and today, 4 books about OSF/Motif, neural networks and object oriented programming with Smalltalk for only EUR 19,--. Pretty cheap, and the books' contents is still valuable for a poor CS student. ;-)
A monkey is doing the real work for me.
I really enjoy buying on the internet. Regarding used (and sometimes new) books, here is what I discovered:
- I get a lot out of the reviews posted by other buyers. But this requires to be vigilant about the posts (the wolfram book is one example where people posted negative reviews one day after the publication, even if the book is 1000 pages.)
- Some people will just lie about the quality of the books they sell just to make more profit. Shop to places with good credibility and don't be surprised to pay a little bit more to get a nicer copy.
- Some sellers are charging up to the nose for books that are out of print. Use google extensively to find your copy for cheaper (half is not always the best place, amazon zshop is also very good.)
- Shipping cost is not negligible. Even using media mail, it will be higher than to pay for sales tax. And media mail is slow and doesn't let you insure your packages.
- Shipping delays are sometimes what makes me go to Borders or BN (the latter which I try to avoid) and get my copy there. Then I order online for cheaper, then I have one month to return my copy to the bricks+cement merchant. You've got to do what you have to do. Not my fault if the "real" stores don't compete aggressively with online prices.
- I still like to go to some dusty used bookstores and browse thru the huge selection, because I support moms&pops businesses and it's really enjoyable to find that rare copy of something I would never have thought buying online (e.g. D&D first ed. monster manual that I bought last weekend.)
PPA, the girl next door.
-- I feel better now. Thanks for asking.
Do like I did. I filled out the registration. Within days I was barraged by spam. So, what's an aspiring [sic] person to do? I went to my NYTimes profile and changed my email address. I wonder if 'webmaster@nytimes.com' wonders "why all the the extra spam?"??
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Anyway, that is pretty much the equivalent of giving your .mp3s away for free over the net from your ripped CDs, is it not? The problem isn't necessarily the copying, I suspect, but rather the distribution.
I imagine that it is pretty much OK to transcribe a book to your computer to transfer to your PDA, but you are not allowed to post that copyrighted work to your web page and give it away. On the same note I imagine (even though the RIAA is trying to take even this away) that it is pretty much OK to rip your CD for use in your portable .mp3 player, but you are not allowed to post those songs to your web page and give them away.
Please correct me if I am wrong, but that is pretty much how it works, right?
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
..my one problem with used book sales is when they are done so heavily in those crucial "first few months" you mention.
When that happens, the publisher gets a distorted view of how popular the author's work is, which can lead to new authors simply not getting a second book contract. This is a BAD thing for the publishers, the authors, AND the fans.
And this is also why selling review copies is just plain short-sighted.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Record companies would love to stop used CD sales.
I wouldn't worry about restrictions on the sales of used books until long after CD resale becomes illegal.
There is one fly in the ointment- I have seen stories regarding restrictions on the resale of books that include CD-ROMs, related to the licensing of the software on the included CD.
I do not deploy Linux. Ever.
I realize this...it was just a well known example. If you had ever worked in the food industry (I don't know if you have), you would know that 99.9% of the people that ask for cola ask for Coke. That is where the example gets it's feed from. It's also why if you work in an establishment that serves Pepsi, the staff must be trained to inform the customers that the restaurant serves Pepsi and not coke.
Anyways...like I said, it is just an illustrative example. No need to get all technical. What do you think this is...Slashdot? Oh...
This is something I noticed long before eBay... Once upon a time I would attend (real world) auctions and I noticed that quite often people would get so caught up in the frenzy of bidding that they would bid well beyond what something was worth. A few auctions were so bad that the bulk of the people in the room would be laughing (loudly!) at the 2-3 idoits in the room who just couldn't let something go... I think this is the prime motivation for folks to hold an auction instead of just placing it up for sale some other way. Furthermore, opening up the bidding audience to a nationwide set of bidders only increases the chances that there will be an obsessive-compulsive type bidding against you... Even better for the seller!
With that in mind, I think the Internet has affected "real world" sales in two distinct ways... eBay has made it incredibly easy for folks to auction something. Before you had to have a decent amount of stuff and hire an auctioneer, now all you need is a digital camera and a credit card. In cases where a seller has not gone the eBay route, the mere fact something can be sold to a wider audience will raise the value of that item. If I sell a relatively obscure book in a real world shop, chances are pretty low that someone will come in and buy it. But if I can open my audience up to a larger group of folks looking for that book, the value rises. (Higher demand, fixed supply -> price goes up.)
-z
In Soviet Russia, the Beowulf cluster imagines you!
The notion of the old-fashioned massive book sale is not dead yet, either.
There's a book sale that Case Western Reserve U. has every few years. It goes on for four days, and the last day is "box day" - meaning that you fill any size box with books, and pay only $5. People drive from Alabama for this sale, it's something of a legend.
This year, I got the complete set of Asimov's Foundation series (in hardcover), 4 of Buckminster Fuller's greatest books, 4 hardcover William Gibsons (of these, the best find was The Difference Engine), 4 lonely planet travel guides, Carl Sagan's Cosmos and Dragons of Eden and about 35 kilos more of miscellaneous biographies, textbooks, philosophy anthologies, Time-Life coffee-table books, the complete corpus of James Michener - all for five bucks!
Meanwhile, my compulsive roommate bought two complete encyclopedias, one from 1905 and one from 1860. I asked him why, he says, "they were old."
Right. Now I have to build new shelves.
They also have some rarities. From the website:
Among the finds on this year's silent auction table will be a first-edition copy of E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, with illustrations by Garth Williams; a copy of Paul Cheswick's Robin Hood, illustrated by N.C. Wyeth; a rare James Joyce Pomes Penyeach, printed privately in Cleveland in 1931 and from a limited series of 100 copies; and a leather-bound copy of Charles Dickens' Master Humphrey's Clock and The Old Curiosity Shop (printed in London by Chapman and Hall).
If you're anywhere in the East, I encourage you to come next year. All the proceeds go to the Association for Continuing Education.
'Be always mindful, even when ditch-digging.' --D. T. Suzuki
Authors tend to be voracious readers. They get more out of this sort of thing than most people. I can't tell you how much of MY library was bought used, but think 'lots' ;)
Your library, like most, may have a small selection that does not include the book you are interested in.
You might plan to read it over more than the 1 or 3 week period that the library allows.
You might have bought it intending to keep it but simply have decided that the book wasn't that good, or just not something that you'll ever read again.
You might try to sell it on e-bay for more than the retail price. I have a friend who has sold a lot of books on ebay, both stuff bought at Goodwill for a nickel or dime and sold on-line for $30 or more, as well as new books that she was surprised to see bid up significantly higher than the new book price she paid at Borders for the still in print book (plus an extra profit made in that shipping fee).
You might see it in the book store, want it and buy it now planning on selling it, and still be further ahead than making several trips to your local library (about a 35+ mile round trip drive each time in my case) to pick it up and return it, even if they do have it when you look for it.
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
The search for a series of seven OOP paperbacks made me a used bookstore lover. Every vacation involved mining the used bookstores in the area. The thrill of the hunt.
Now I can find most of what I want online, but at significantly higher prices.
Used books, like many items on eBay, are a seller's market. (Like the used but still available DVDs that are bid up until they're over list price.) Good for the dealers, their target customers aren't limited to the locals. Bad for the buyer who used to take the trouble to hunt.
In used bookstores, the buyers and the sellers loved books. Now there are people who are just trying to score an easy profit. Consider the people working just-in-time inventory scams: Advertise a book on half.com or amazon.com for an inflated price. (A lot of people don't look past those two.) After on order comes in, buy it online somewhere else to ship to them! Actually this isn't really a scam. If someone agrees to pay an inflated price, that's their problem. But it shows that you really need to know what things are worth.
I'll continue to use both online and B&M sources, at least as long as there continue to be B&M sources.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
I just realized that books are the one media that will continue to be sold and re-sold for the forseeable future. As someone who is currently replacing all his CDs, Videos, DVDs with digital equivalents I can see that sales of 2nd-Hand films and music will fall off in the next few years because a lot of people will be "pirating" their own DVDs, computer games, albums and videos then selling them; once everyone is doing this there will be nobody buying originals to sell on.
With books however we still haven't got to the stage where the electronic "rip" is as good as owning the original. I think it will take years before portable readers are as good as real books (in terms of ease of reading, battery life, portability etc).
The other thing that may happen is that it becomes feasible to print a book to read it then recycling the paper. I think the price of ink in a format to suit a printer will always make this uneconomical though.
Just my thoughts
graspee
Today, of course, it is worse.
So let's not jump to the conclusion that the publishing industry is about compensating authors. They've always needed to flip burgers in addition to writing. That's also why retired or disabled (like Heinlein) people have made up a large percentage of authors: it's generally not possible to spend the time writing without being paid, and being paid isn't necessarily an option for everybody who does good work.
The book industry isn't going to solve that- it appears to be going the other direction and making matters worse.
I continually get reminders from readers I've never heard from- asking when will my latest book be finished (I gave up and just put everything on the web so at least it could be read). I get 'em maybe a couple times a year, and I reply "Oh, it'll be finished one day!" and don't tend to devote much time to it. If I was getting reminders a couple times a day, that's when I'd start thinking about replying, "Want to buy a copy?" and devoting more time to it. Until then I just have to hope I live long enough to eventually finish the stories I'm gradually telling.
I'm more interested in reading Terry Pratchett than in writing my own stories. _HE_ writes all the time. and it's his main thing that he does. I have too many other outlets to really do that.. at least for now. Well-rounded is good but it won't make you a Stephen King.
The question to ask is 'do you want to do this all the time for the rest of your life?'
You are talking about the Thor Power Tools case, which made books in a warehouse subject to inventory taxes.
I've been told that publishers found easy workarounds for this, though. It only applies to completed products, not incomplete assemblies. So one thing they did was store covers and pages separately, and do the final binding only as demand requires.
These days you can look at things like books in the frame of total cost of ownership. Now that easy resale is possible, you can figure in the likely resale price and figure your TCO. There are a lot of things I can afford to buy new and forget about, but looking at it this way is kind of fun. I do it for everything from books to computer equipment to camera equipment to bike parts to blue jeans. Yup, even blue jeans- used 501s have a great resale value, and very low TCO!
...when books are so expensive here in the US.
My office is directly above a second-hand bookshop on a university campus. I often browse through the books on offer, which are typically around 2/3rds of the original published price. It is almost always still cheaper to buy and ship the books from Europe!
For example, my most recent purchase of 3 books cost the equivalent of $98, in total, from the UK. The price here (say from Amazon.com) would have been about $160. The second hand bookshop had one of those books (the famous Modern Operating Systems) for $15 less than the published price - still $5 more than the price that I paid.
Auctions favour the seller when the item is in high demand or they can create the illusion that the item is in higher demand. Provided there is more than one interested buyer, the item will always be sold to the party with the highest estimate of the value. See "The winner's curse" by Thaler (You might want to find it used some place though...)
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
I doubt it! Assuming they ever find the bastard I think it might be one of those "difficult" arrests that involve falling down the stairs a few times and having to be "forcibly restrained".
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
What? Ripping off artists?
"I want to read your work, but you'd better not start thinking about getting paid!"
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Guy Fawkes was tortured until he revealed the names of his co-conspirators (and those of a few innocent men too, just to make up the numbers), then hanged, drawn and quartered.
He is, however, the only 17th century political figure with his own parties 400 years later.
For our bonfire night last November I made a guy with a straggly beard (black felt with longitudinal cuts) and a toilet-paper turban. Went up very nicely.
--
E_NOSIG
Those folks who have pointed out selling used books would be impossible to stop because of long-standing inertia are quite correct. The same is true with public libraries (indeed, ANY libraries) because they are very much entrenched. Indeed, there is along-standing friction between libraries and publishers over this very issue. In some countries there is a so-called "public lending right" which results in the goverment paying fees to publishers based on library corculation. Authors, in truth the most low-paid cog in the publishing machine, are all for this because that means more royalties (they think), so it's been made into a class issue as well.
Today is not the problem; tomorrow is. Today e-books and e-distribution, and e-paper, and all that is not much of an issue. After some initial excitement the concept is in the trough of disillusionment at the moment once publishers figured out people didn't want to lug around a Rocketbook.
In about then yeras or so we are likely to see the first signs of a peak in the "book" industry and the first statistically significant moves to digital in the industry. As that happens you will be buying a license to read the material. Time and technology will gradually decide this issue as more and more material is produced in the new formats.
It does not bode well for libraries or the used book trade. I am a librarian of 30 years in charge of our IT department. There is a sentiment in our profession that we may not be around as an institution very much longer.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
To take an analogy that's similar to yours:
In Canada, we have fair use laws. The law allows me to purchase a CD (or tape, or whatever). I can give or lend the original CD/tape to a friend legally. My friend can also legally make a copy of that CD or tape for his/her own use, and then return that (original) CD back to me.
I am allowed to make copies of that CD or tape for my own personal use.
I am not allowed to give/sell/lend those copies to anyone else.
It's not a bad compromise, I think.
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Well, there's always half.com, eBay's sell-it-used-at-a-fixed-price site. Beyond that, the best advice is not to bid on an item you want, until the very last minutes of the auction...because your bid will drive the price higher than it would otherwise, and at the end you'll know just what you're paying.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
Actually, I bet comic books really lend themselves well to online sale via eBay and so forth.
The big advantage is their light weight. The nagging problem I've always had trying to sell books online is the cost of postage (with hardbacks especially!) prevents you from making much on the sale. I could toss a comic book in a cardboard mailer and send it via 1st. class mail for under $1.00.
The U.S. post office is once again raising prices at the end of this month - so it's only going to get worse.
It used to be, people always said postage was pretty much a non-issue, because by mail ordering (or buying on eBay), you avoided sales tax. It's getting so now, that's no longer true for anything that's somewhat heavy but not worth a high dollar value.
I may be wrong, but I believe that you do indeed own the music on the cd, or the words on the paper.
I might not have been clear when I said "own". What I meant by "own" is that that words in the book or the music on the CD are that of the author. You can't claim that they are yours, even if you bought the book or the CD. It is hard to use ideas of ownership for ideas. As I said, you can't pick up and hold words or music. They aren't tangible things.
The author of a work does own the rights to the work, for a limited time as defined by copyright laws. Once the copyright expires, the work becomes part of the public domain. Yet, you still don't "own" the work. I am again using "own" as definded above. The words are still those of the author, you can't claim that they are yours. Your use of the work is no longer restricted but you still don't own the work. The public as a whole does.
So, when you buy a book or CD or other work, you own the physical stuff that the work is distributed on. But you don't own what is contained on the physical stuff.
Heidi, FactorFantasy.com
the world ... Illinois ... New York ... California
It truly is a small world after all!
Try someone in Australia buys from California if you want to illustrate a "world" market. The amazing thing is that I can buy used books from the US - good quality at much cheaper prices - and beat the incredible cost of imported tech books in Australia.
The internet is much better than the old international "mail order" way of buying books. Finding those mail-order firms by looking through imported journals and newspapers was a lot harder than using the web.
Better still, I want to buy some German books that never even make it to the academic library shelves here, let alone the bookshops. This is a lot easier to do on the web.
You need a bigger concept of the world.
I am anarch of all I survey.
I'm from Northern Ireland and I've never heard anyone there have a good word for Cromwell on any side. He does figure in some parades but not as the main object.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Well, I think OBL can look forward to the torture but I admit that the rest is unlikely.
He is, however, the only 17th century political figure with his own parties 400 years later.
William III is pretty well supported for parties in NI and parts of Scotland, although he's still got a bit to go for the 400th anniversary.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
I think it may be even more basic than that: economics. Used books are relatively cheap entertainment, and the midwest in general (and small towns in particular), while generally "middle class", just doesn't have the disposable income levels of the coasts and its cities.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
I'm allergic to many old books and papers, and
would much prefer to have a digital copy on a good display or possibly even printed on paper again if needed. For this reason a digital certificate which certified the existence of one owned, printed copy of a book would be useful. This would allow for fair use and (might) discourage putting things in public domain (though it is not necessarily bad for authors).
Then if you buy a used book and the book had a serial number in it you could get the digital version online. To me these digital versions would be more valuable and I would be willing to pay money for quality digital reproductions (not as much as the original book though).
I have found that short documents printed two pages to a side is also useable, though at only a single side being used, too thick and wasteful of paper.
Having read the digital versions of many books on my Palm which I had previously purchased years ago in paperback, I can attest to the utility of even a low quality display. The only problem is not getting to sleep until 4 am! Publishers should get on the bandwagon and stop being such police. A little flexibility and trust may go a long way. Personally I have only picked authors I have already read everything of years ago, and now I have rediscovered them.. and found some new authors to watch for, having given up on small bookstores until now.
I wish you could like to see a digital certificate provided with each printed book (could even be issued retroactively through a website if publishers wished..) which would
www.addall.com/used searches smaller book shops for used and out-of-print books.
Arrogant and unrealistic? Of course. Hard to imagine congress criminalizing used book stores! I doubt if anybody at AOL/TW or Disney really envisions achieving such a goal. It's just a legal/political tactic. It's one more case of "lost intellectual property" that they can use as a bargaining chip when things like copyright extension and the precise definition of "fair use" come up for negotiation.