Slashdot Mirror
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.
#
# Modus Ponens
#
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.
.. 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
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.
Lost: Sig, white with black letters. No collar. Reward if found!
Could be worse. I borrowed one of my gf's books, that she'd obviously studied at some point in the past as it was full of notes.
Unfortunately, they really catch your eye. I was half way through the book, when I came across an underlined sentence with a note reading, "This is why he dies at the end."
Arrrghh!
Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
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.
Personally I find it amazing that anyone would want to buy a used book ... The damage and wear that multiple reads, shipping, selling, etc puts on books in my opinion ruins them.
And that's why you find it amazing. You don't understand the love of secondhand books.
Good secondhand bookstores are their own microcosm of wonder - especially the ones with creaky wooden floors, three cramped stories packed with floor to ceiling shelves, and overstuffed leather armchairs in odd places. There's a magic about prowling through the slightly yellowed rows of golden age SciFi looking for that one special novel that will complete your obscure author collection (Lloyd Biggle jr, anyone?), and if you don't understand that magic, well, I'm sorry for you. Used/old books have a certain smell and feel that is unique, and I'll guarantee that the great majority of good authors frequent second-hand bookstores.
Keeping books in "perfect condition" is a nice ideal - you should take care of books. My personal peeve is people who mark their place by leaving the book open, face down (Fire and Hemlock's fault). But keeping them in mint condition is unecessarily picky. Books are made to be read, and signs of wear are the marks of a good book. My (third) copy of LOTR is battered, creased, dogeared, and still perfectly readable. I can throw it in my backpack or overcoat pocket for reading on long bus trips, or up on a hill at Uni. Maybe, if it survives further multiple readings, I'll be able to lend it to someone else to love.
And by lend, I usually mean give - I don't try particularly hard to get back really good books that I can easily get another copy of secondhand, which is the whole point of second-hand books. Good books are to be read and shared. Not kept in vacuum storage for their preservation.
|>
Here be Dragons
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.