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How to Heartlessly Arbitrage Used Books With a PDA

Posted by timothy on from the have-you-ever-seen-such-cruelty? dept.

Pickens writes "Michael Savitz writes at Salon how he makes a living armed with a laser bar-code scanner fitted to a Dell PDA. Savitz haunts thrift stores and library book sales to scan hundreds of used books a day and instantly identify those that will get a good price on Amazon Marketplace. 'My PDA shows the range of prices that other Amazon sellers are asking for the book in question,' writes Savitz. 'Those listings offer me guidance on what price to set when I post the book myself and how much I'm likely to earn when the sale goes through.' Savitz writes that on average, only one book in 30 will have a resale value that makes it a "BUY" but that he goes through enough books to average about 30 books sold per day. 'If I can tell from a book's Amazon sales rank that I'll be able to sell it in one day, I might accept a projected profit of as little as a dollar. The more difficult a book will be to sell, the more money the sale needs to promise.' Savitz writes that people scanning books sometimes get kicked out of thrift stores and retail shops and that libraries are beginning to advertise that no electronic devices are allowed at their sales. 'If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?' concludes Savitz."

10 of 445 comments (clear)

  1. Depends what you want... by backwardMechanic · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Sure, you can go through all those second-hand bookstores and strip them of anything will make a profit. It makes the store less interesting for the rest of us, who actually want to read the books we find. I like the search, which may turn up a treasure I recognise, or may turn up something obscure that I, but virtually nobody else, want to read. To put it another way, it's why Firefly was canned. Lots of us thought it was good, but not enough to turn a quick profit. There's a lot of instant-hit cheap crap on TV. Please don't do this to bookstores as well.

    1. Re:Depends what you want... by Dexter+Herbivore · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The bookstores are putting them up for sale at a price which they deem to make a fair profit for them. What's wrong with him buying them and selling them elsewhere if he believes that he can make a profit too?

    2. Re:Depends what you want... by ultranova · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The bookstores are putting them up for sale at a price which they deem to make a fair profit for them. What's wrong with him buying them and selling them elsewhere if he believes that he can make a profit too?

      Because it rises the price of books for everyone else. Rather than getting a book for $2 from the bookstore, I'll have to buy it for $5 from Amazon.

      This guy is simply a new version of a ticket scalper. He's a parasite and will hopefully get banned from every bookstore. Every single penny he makes comes from someone else's pocket; he simply monopolizes a resource and profiteers from it, contributing absolutely nothing to the economy. He's scum.

      --

      Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.

    3. Re:Depends what you want... by Sethumme · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Well, local used-books shops might be accurately pricing their books for the local market, which could differ from the nationwide market on the internet. If the local stores were forced to price to the national market, they might not be able to sell those books to their usual customers, and not even the used-book arbitrage traders would want to buy them. This could, in the long run, significantly reduce the thrift bookstore revenues and drive some out of business.

      And like GP pointed out, some of the hidden treasures in the book stores act as sales to draw in customers to the store, who might buy other books as well. If the arbitrage trades come in and snatch up the "sale" items, the stores are forced to eat the discount instead of generating more revenue.

  2. Re:Breaking an unspoken social contract by icebraining · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As someone for whom the web is the only place I can find such "treasures" in their original language (I'm not from an English speaking country), stopping him from doing what he's doing deprives me from actually reading the books.

    --
    Dilbert RSS feed
  3. Re:Nothing shameless by datapharmer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, they are being sold to clear the shelf space for something else. Why aren't libraries using these scanners and pricing their books appropriately?

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    Get a web developer
  4. Re:Lots of reasons... by complete+loony · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The libraries don't even need a scanner to accomplish the same thing. Just trawl through their database and look up the Amazon price / volume. Filter out the more valuable volumes, separate them, mark them for prices that are closer to market value. And anything the locals don't buy, list online.

    Do that and you remove the easy profit from scalpers, removing the problem.

    --
    09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
  5. Scanners are allowed by ghostlibrary · · Score: 5, Interesting

    This may come as a shock, but the summary isn't *gasp* fully accurate. Scanners are allowed at the library sale they say forbids it. It's actually rather interesting-- the early "member's only" hour forbids scanners, then they let scanners in during the open sale hours. So it's a nice compromise between "let people browse" and "let the book sellers make a profit", they're just giving first crack to readers, then a fair shake to sellers afterwards. Neat compromise, that.

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    A.
  6. This is a job that will disappear by Overzeetop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Two things:

    Someone will make up a better way and sell it to the bigger book stores and thrift stores. The will relegate this to a smaller and smaller pool, as competition (thanks to articles like this) heats up for the dwindling supply of non-internet-enabled stores.

    Second: the pay sucks. This guy, who admits that you can make up to $1000 a week (more if you employ your family/other people) spends 80 hours doing all the work, including listing, selling, and mailing.

    Okay...so he's grossing $12.50 hr, on average. Great. When the economy picks up and he can get a "real" job paying him twice that, this option will probably go away. Presuming he's not ADHD or otherwise impaired, anyone with this kind of organizational skill is probably going to be gold for somebody who can pay him $45-60k/yr plus benefits. For 40-50 hours a week of work. He'll get his life back (presuming he ever had one), and get better pay and benefits.

    This is the depression era trashpicker. They will always exist, but it's mostly a fad that rears its head in bad times. The only twist to it is that the internet has made the trashpickers job "clean".

    --
    Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
  7. Re:Nothing shameless by NineNine · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Why aren't libraries using these scanners and pricing their books appropriately?"

    Because their mission is to help people in their communities get better access to books, not make a profit.