For me once a fiction book is read it is just a lump of carbon taking up space in my house. I realise that opinion is not universal but I expect is reasonably common.
My town’s library never gets the books I want to read, not even sure if they’re getting any new books at all. I’m too cheap to pay full price. I don’t understand why the price on eBay never drops significantly around the 2 week mark where the people who bought it to read it straight away, and then have no interest in it taking up space, try to offload it. Instead it takes several years for prices to fall.
Because no one would buy the book in the first two weeks if they knew the price was going to drop. And some people don’t have time to read a new book right away, so they delay their purchase.
The writer makes money off of the book, its his income. Most writers do not get a large sum up front, they depend on book sales for income. Some of which trickles in over the years by them hawking the book themselves at bookstores.
Why deny them that, books don’t really cost all that much to begin with when compared to the hours of entertainment they provide.
Also, there is a market for used books, just check out the offerings on Amazon where you can choose new or used copies of most books after they have been out for a while.
Because reselling a book is kinda a pain in the ass, and shipping is a substantial part of the cost. So the resale market is slow and not super efficient.
I don’t think the population of people who rush out to pay full price for a book are the same people who think books are not worth keeping after you’ve read them once.
I don’t see why not. Just because someone really wants to read a new book doesn’t mean that they are interested in having it around once the information transfer is complete.
I have sold books on eBay, but only ones that had a high profit margin. I go to a lot of estate sales and look for books that are selling cheap that I know I can resale. Like a copy of a book that was published in 1778 and a copy of which is in the Jefferson Library at Monticello. Another was an early book from the 1920’s about studies in sexual perversions, which fetched a lot more than I expected.
I wouldn’t waste my time on recent fiction books, no margin to be had even if they are signed by the author.
If I buy a new book for $20 and sell it on eBay for $10 it is not worth my time after paying the shipping fee. And buyers do not want to pay a shipping fee that brings the cost of the book back to full retail. And I am not going to take a loss just so someone can get a book at half price.
Many of the books listed on eBay remain unsold forever. Its a waste of time unless it’s something people want to collect, not just read. Sellers are there to make a profit, if they can’t make a profit they will not list an item as it is a waste of time, and time is money.
And eBay cannot really compete with Amazon, which was orignally set up for selling books and pretty much became the 800 pound gorilla in the book selling space.
Well that’s your problem in a nutshell. You’re envisioning a world full of colinfreds who have created a robust buyer’s market for used new release physical books. In this same world, you’re envisioning a robust community of sellers who make a habit of purchasing brand new books, reading them quickly, and immediately selling them online to recoup a few bucks.
Neither of those groups exist in our world. No supply, no demand, no market.
In this sense you’re just like 99% of the world. Most people don’t.
I’d ask the OP if they’ve looked into the e-book options at their library?
Lots of libraries subscribe to e-book services that give all their patrons access to a huge catalog of e-books shared amongst thousands of libraries. Those mongo catalogs tend to get best-sellers the day they come out. My own independent town-level library subscribes to multiple e-book services.
The only thing better than cheap on eBay is 100% free from the library and delivered instantly after a couple of clicks.
It wouldn’t need to be robust, just a few people on each side. It’s not like I’m just missing the opportunities. I can go to “completed listings” and see that not one single copy has been sold for less than 90% of the Amazon mainline price.
I suspect this the single largest part of it. Books are annoying to ship, hardcover books are heavy and media mail is slow and doesn’t offer tracking for eBay purposes. If you’re going to mail someone a recent book with “price crash” profits, you’re probably better off taking it to a Half-Price Books or similar and getting your $2 there instead.
I also suspect that the confluence of being interested enough in a book to purchase and read it immediately upon publication, not being interested in keeping it afterward and being motivated to try to make a couple dollars back just isn’t especially common. With such sellers being spread among hundreds of thousands of books, it’s not surprising to rarely come across all that in a package for the book you’re after.
How much of the stuff sold on eBay is a recently purchased lightly used product? There is some. I’m familiar with this being done with tools. Someone buys a specialty tool, uses it for a current purpose, but doesn’t see a future use for it and sells it on eBay. How often does that happen with books though? Even with tools it’s going to usually be something expensive. Books are outrageously priced but available at libraries or electronic form, and often shared by multiple people. Just like tools you shouldn’t expect to share a book and see it again, certainly not in the condition you bought it. So I question if this is the usual model on eBay. I think most stuff for sale is older, no longer of use to the owner, or frequently found used with no serious investment. But I don’t buy much from eBay, and even though I have a lot of stuff I could sell on eBay it doesn’t seem worth the effort to clean the product and pack it for shipping to someone who could just complain about it and wants to return it.
This (bolding mine) is the reason I stopped selling on eBay. For instance, you could sell a book on eBay, they could read it and then complain that it wasn’t in very good condition and want a refund. And eBay will always let the buyer do this. The eBay platform is just not worth the time and effort for me to sell anything there anymore.