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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.
You've already put more into it than it's worth, but if you really want to know, find the local big book store's buyback locale and walk it in there. They have estimates for everything, and for what they don't have, they can speculate, but at that point it's usually due another trip to the dumpster/recycler.
Keep anything you think might sell. Track by acquisition date. If it's not gone in X months, throw it on the free cart. Another month, toss it.
"X" depends on your turnover, space, and how many books are coming in. Since you're space limited, get rid of the oldest ones first.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
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.
I'd say the reference book has likely become outdated and current info is easily found on the internet.
But books like the Perl Camel book - much more than merely a reference - those are valuable for long after their topic is upgraded.
My 2 cents. Good luck...
This is my opinion.
Java--anything that doesn't say Java2 keep.
Spring -- anything
Application servers--keep anything.
Anything Windows--pitch. Anybody buying used books won't be able to afford Visual Studio.
Anything A+ -- pitch. Don't encourage that dead end.
Anything Networking--pitch, another dead end.
Anything design related--keep.
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
Save anything that is foundational or fundamental to any particular field. Any book that continues to be cited academically or has increased in value on the used market should probably be kept.
My local public library system foolishly trashed some true classics in algorithms, graphics, and fractals simply because they were old. Now all you find in the stacks are books focused on instruction for specific software applications, books which are certain to be obsolete in a few years.
+0 Meh
My guess is that books not on specific tools or versions retain their value much longer. Titles like Design Patterns, Network programming, Computer Graphics are more likely to be useful after a couple of years. Also check if the editions are used in any university courses.
When asked why, the answer is almost always: "It's 2014".
We worked really hard in the 70s on so you wouldn't need books. Everything I did was documented with roff/runoff. This begat, in a roundabout way SCRIBE which begat SGML which begat HTML.
I've programmed C since 1974 and still do, daily. I've bought K&R, twice (and have touched a mimeographed copy dmr made pencil notes in belonging to Jim Fleming) and the O'Reily MySql book to get a fucking update statement right in 1997. Fifty bucks for one page. Other than that I just haven't found a need for them. And I've done pretty much everything.
In the post-Internet era what is it exactly you can't learn about computers without a book. I don't even want to hear it's "easier". I'm used to not doing it and fins it much less efficient, especially for this kind of stuff where I'm one click away from a local file as opposed to go find the book, find the page...
Read K&R, Read Knuth. The rest you can easily live without.
(Skip the TeX stuff though, he went insane at some point)
Need Mercedes parts ?
I have some computer science / theory books that are twenty years old and still quite valuable. Those include Cod on relational database design theory. My Visual Basic 6 books are trash because they cover a specific, outdated version of the software.
Thinking about it further, not only are the good old books theory oriented, the ones that come to mind on authored by the originators of the topic - Cod & Date, K&R, etc. The thoughts of the founding fathers of a discipline are always relevant.
K&R C and the Folley/van Dam book are classics of computing. Those represent a tiny chunk of the used book market though, not really representative of the average old book. Books that have later editions at all are generally a good sign of quality. It's reasonable to bin those separately from the one-shot books and prefer keeping them around. By that standard, an old "Programming Perl" *might* still be useful to someone who just doesn't want to spring for a newer version, while "PostgreSQL Essential Reference" heads for recycling. Having read each, those would both be reasonable calls.
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)
These books are all just copies, not original manuscripts. And O'Reilly books were never a work of art as a medium. Be ruthless.
If you ever really do need an old edition of the Camel Book, it is available as a PDF download.
As for, K&R C and the Folley/van Dam book - well, some things are special cases. I still have mine. But as above, very few books are as important as those.
Dump anything that is titled "for Dummies" or "Learn $X in $Y days!"
Keep anything, no matter how old, from O'Reilly books.
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?
My Local library sells any books donated to them so they can use that money to buy more books.
Go figure. They got a book, so instead of loaning it out, they sell it for less then it costs to buy another book. Great system.
Because a good librarian will keep the collection alive with books that enough people will actually want to read. Usually libraries are not interested in just accumulating people's old junk books.
It is a great system. It's a fantastic system.
I used to work at a library ages ago, and that's generally the system we used. We might keep a donated book, if we thought there was demand for it, but it was rare.
Because we didn't want to waste shelf space on random books people didn't want any more. Libraries generally have a pretty good idea of what books are in demand by their patrons, and selling books that won't ever be leant out lets them get books people actually want.
The APPLE II BASIC programming manual by Jef Raskin currently goes for $52 and up on Amazon. A few years ago I found a late-'90s book on embedded systems programming that turned out to be in demand and later sold for about $100 on Amazon. So look up anything unusual, specific, or that might have nostalgia value there or on Bookfinder.com before you recycle them or sell them for a buck or two.
Q: What does the "B." in Benoit B. Mandelbrot stand for? A: Benoit B. Mandelbrot
Pascal? I'm not sure it's Wirth it.
No sig, sorry.
It is even easier than that. Just go to Amazon and check the used book price for each book. If the book is selling for a dollar or less, there probably isn't any demand. Set whatever threshold is worth your time, whether that is $2 or $20, and toss the rest.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
1. I keep most programming books, in fact I still have 8086 assembly and qbasic on my shelf. My rational is they are as useable today as they were twenty years ago. However, books like HTML3 were recycled years ago.
2. Technical books get recycled after ten years. I.e. Windows 95 for retards, Ethernet the definitive guide, Astrisk, CNE study guide, Master Fedora 3, Absolute FreeBSD. However, a book like "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System" would be kept as it is a reference book ooperating system design... which fundamentally hasn't changed in thirty years.
3. I unconditionally keep all math, chem, electronics, science type reference books. It's not as if the laws do the universe are going to change anytime soon.
Basically, open the book up to a random section, if it is still relevant (I.e. calculus, electronics principles, x86 assembly programming, c programming, perl cookbook, etc.) keep it.
Like "The art of software testing" from 1976. Or the C programming language by Kerningham and Richie. I would certainly save the classics.
Hah! That's Rich(ie)...
A bit AWK-ward, though.