Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Prioritizing Saleable Used Computer Books?
g01d4 writes "I volunteer at a used bookstore that supports the local library. One of my tasks is to sort book donations. For > 5-year-old computer books the choices typically are to save it for sale (fifty cents soft cover, one dollar hardback), pack it, e.g. for another library's bookstore, put it on the free cart, or toss it in the recycle bin. I occasionally dumpster dive the recycle bin to 'rescue' books that I don't think should be pulped. Recently I found a copy of PostgresSQL Essential Reference (2002) and Programming Perl (1996). Would you have left them to RIP? Obviously we have very limited space, 20 shelf feet (storage + sale) for STEM. What criteria would you use when sorting these types of books?"
Although there are many good, reliable books that are several years old (on computer principles, logical logic and whatnot), you'll probably be better off sorting by year.
... but not available.
You'll end up putting a few great books farther down the line than you otherwise would, but sorting by publication date will ensure that the vast majority of the books are still relevant.
If you've got time, sort by quality. You're the expert, though, and your time is limited. Would you prefer something that is good enough - and done, or something that's perfect
- Nec Impar Pluribus, or so I'm told.
Recently I found a copy of PostgresSQL Essential Reference (2002) and Programming Perl (1996). Would you have left them to RIP?
When I replace a book with a newer edition I set aside the older edition. Sooner or later a relative, friend, co-worker, someone will express an interest in learning to program or learning some new area. My old K&R The C Programming Language, Foley and van Dam Fundamentals of Interactive Computer Graphics, etc all found new homes this way. Why toss out a book that someone curious might want to take a look at?
A lot of technical books end up being sold on ebay or through Amazon's used book dealer network. If you give stuff to Goodwill, chances are it will end up in one of those places if it has any resale value.
Patent lawyers trying to bust patents from the mid 1990s live on this stuff. Call your local friendly intellectual property law firm and see if you can unload the whole batch. They'd probably pay much more than $1.00/book.
Fast Federal Court and I.T.C. updates
I used to work at a used bookstore, and I was in charge of our computer books section. My experience was that programming books would sell the best - I would put them on the shelf, no matter how old they were, and they would sell. You'd be surprised to see that some still look up for $10-20 on Amazon too, even at over 10 years old. Java & C/C++ sold the best, but they would all sell, I always had empty room on those shelves. The next best sellers were database/server books, then recent Windows OS/recentish OS X/any Linux books. Older OS books (especially older Windows books), most application books, and most how-to-use-a-computer/internet/laptop/etc books did not sell well unless they were less than a year old.
So I would have also rescued your two books - I think they were good choices, and are likely to sell even though they are old. I would use the above criteria for determining what to keep, and if space is an issue, I'd limit some of the OS/application/textbook sort of stuff to 2-3 years back instead of 5 rather than get rid of older programming & server/database books.
Could you whip up a little tool that would scan the barcode, query the item on Amazon, and see what the sales rank is? There you'd have market telling you what is in demand and what is not. I'd bet (not looking now) the Knuth books have a decent used sales rank while "Learning Filemaker 2.1" does not.
Find your threshold(s) and have the tool tell the clerk [shelve,sell,recycle].
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
You might be right.
Google a sentence out the the beginning of some chapter that looks kind of unique. Google it in quotes.
If the book shows up somewhere on the web, trash it.
You are not doing humanity any favors by keeping those fibers out of the recycle chain.
(If you are worried about the apocalypse start saving gardening books, not computer books.)
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
"Problem is that some clever people might wait for it to hit the free cart..."
Well, no. That only works if there's only one clever person (per book). Otherwise, they'll find out "snooze, you lose."
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Of course, depending on when it was bought it may have come with all of the "animal books" about Perl on CD with it (mine did anyway). And, your local library may have a Safari subscription - mine does. No need for paper in the majority of cases. As a teacher its great because I can assign just a few great chapters from various books and not cost the student $250 in books for a 3 credit class.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos
I really want to see a way that old books (90's and early 2000) content get published for free under a license that allows derivative works like Creative Common Share Alike.
I contacted some author and almost everyone wants to release the content of their books for free, but this can not be possible since the copyright of the books belongs to the publishers.
The publishers are big companies and you don't even know to whom ask permission for this and some of them don't want to give anything from their IP. (I even tried once with MS Press by Twitter and never got an answer).
Do we have to wait a 100 (or something like that) years for the content to be public domain? or does anybody knows any trick on some publishers to open some of their content?
Don't get me started about their + operator change either...
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.