Granted we’ve got some crap but even books that I would think would sell often don’t budge. Hardbacks don’t really go, a paperback middlebrow novel or nonfiction book would be the typical seller, stuff like as you say last year’s bestsellers or classics. The volume of sales of these types of books is way down on previously.
I buy boxloads of used books from Amazon Marketplace. You can find anything there. Since eBay and Amazon came along, everybody can see what everybody else has – it’s a buyer’s market. If a book was a bestseller, there will be a zillion used copies floating around within a year. I’d rather wait a year or two and buy a book used, cheap, than go into a Borders or B&N and buy it new. (The locally-owned bookstore went under years ago.)
I don’t know how some of the sellers make a go of it, frankly. Better World Books and others sell books on Amazon for a penny apiece.
My favorite thrift store has a very random selection of books. Mostly, they are in poor shape, just one step up from “reading copy” quality. Sometimes they’re reading copy quality. It’s very rare to find a book in “acceptable” quality or higher at the thrift shops.
It’s the nature of thrift shops. Most people aren’t going to give away books if they think they can get a couple of (insert monetary unit of choice) for them at a used book store. They’re just cleaning out the junk in their house, and if a book is last year’s best seller, or has been dropped in the bathtub, or Junior has scribbled in the pages and torn the cover, then that’s the book that goes in the thrift store box, as opposed to the sell box.
Do you have anything to serve as a guide to what’s of value that’s been published in the last twenty or thirty years? One of my friends told me that a First Edition of The Stand has a little value to it now – as long as it’s not a book club edition or something like that. Another friend told me to hang onto First Editions of L.M. Alcott books if I come across them. I should have known that one. I love old books just for themselves.
This story was told in Victoria magazine, but it happened here in Nashville in my favorite used bookstore:
A woman was in the back of the small store searching through some old children’s books when suddenly, she let out a cry. The owner of the store and his daughter were startled and concerned, but the woman soon emerged from the shelves clutching a book. She was crying and could hardly talk. She pointed to a name written at the front of the book and explained. “That was my name. This was my book.”
It was not written in English. It was in German, I think. She had had to leave it behind as a child when she fled from the Nazis in World War II.
Can you imagine what it must have meant to find it again?
List the stuff on US Amazon.
Many UK books have never been printed here.
You could charge through the nose for them.
The best guide is Amazon or one of the other online auction sites: you’ll get a pretty good idea of what sells and how much for pretty quickly. Basically, established mass market authors won’t sell recent first editions for much simply because of the sheer volume: God knows how many first edition copies of The Stand are out there.
On the other hand, if it’s something early or unusual by an established author, the price goes up. Neil Gaiman doesn’t shift as many units as King does, but he’s a well-established author with a strong cult appeal now, so a first of American Gods isn’t going to get you much. However, back in 1985 I happened to buy an anthology of SF/fantasy quotes called Ghastly Beyond Belief, which I still have: the author was one Neil Gaiman, it was his first book, it only made it to one edition and one printing, and no-one then could have predicted his rise to cult stardom: consequently, that book is very scarce and now highly desirable with collectors.
But if he wanted to sell on Amazon US, he would need to establish a US-based bank account, and be able to fulfill the domestic shipping speed requirements.
Also, if the books he wants to list already have an entry in the Amazon UK catalogue, he could not create a page for them on Amazon US. (I have a fairly valuable book on “The Foundation of the Chronic Miasms in the Practice of Homeopathy” that I cannot list because it has a UK entry.)
Methinks he is stuck with his books. And recent fiction on the whole is worth its weight as insulation or stove fuel.
Methinks you’re right. I had considered using some of the worst ones as stove fuel.
I’ve wondered about this as well. Surely people will pay a dollar for a used book?! Why sell it for a dime? I’m really surprised if people really can sell a lot more books at a dime each than at a dollar each.
I recently sold a first edition of The Stand on eBay that was a beat to hell former library book and I got $20. It was barely readable and I mentioned that in the listing (as if it wasn’t obvious from the picture). I can’t imagine what a copy in good condition would have fetched me.
Be surprised then. Used books are extremely price sensitive. You can find boxes of them at yard sales not moving for a quarter. Most you practically have to give away. That’s why the big event at Amazon was when large outlets thought of pricing books for 0.01. They don’t lose money, since the dollar or two they net with postage covers the cost. But it turns books over quickly and gives them a high customer satisfaction rating.
And turnover is even more important for stores. If you price the books at a dollar they may sell eventually but in the meantime browsers come through and see the same old ratty books sitting there forever. This is a huge turnoff. If the pile’s contents changes rapidly people will come more often to search through it for something good. And maybe buy stuff that costs more than a dime.
Look, do you have research to cite or something? I see the books on sale for a penny at garage sales and places like that, priced by people who aren’t putting a lot of thought into the economics of it. I see books priced for a quarter to a dollar or so by locally owned small bookshops–again, priced by people I’m not convinced really know how to maximize profits. I see used books priced for a lot more by the only corporation I know of that does used books as its primary business–Half Price Books. That the corporate entity sells books for a lot more makes me suspect that the real economics of the situation indicate a higher price for used books than just a dime.
But that’s not actually selling a book for a penny. That’s selling a book for at least a couple of dollars, but calling it “postage”.
That makes sense.
It’s simple supply and demand. No research required.
Every fiction book published more than two years ago will be hugely overrepresented at online booksellers. Go ahead, look up any book you can think of and you’ll find hundreds of copies. There is not the demand to buy these books in the numbers they are available. So sellers undercut each other until you get to $0.01 a book.
Amazon gives some ridiculous amount of money to sellers for shipping. I think it’s like $2-$3 when a Media Mailed book is around $1.30. Pocket the rest (minus a nominal Amazon fee) and you can make some decent money through volume of penny books.
It’s only when you want a guarantee of quality (online) or you want it right now (from a local seller) that used books become worth more.
The supply/demand thing doesn’t work by magic. It works by actual people engaged in the act of setting prices. And people make mistakes about this. What I’m wondering is whether people selling books at garage sales and mom and pop book shops aren’t consistently making a mistake about how much they can sell their books for–or are concentrating more on getting rid of the books than turning a profit on them. (Exapno’s last suggestion would be in line with this.)
The fact that the corporate entity, the one likely to have hired economists and run simulations and so on, actually charges quite a bit more for used books, makes me suspect that the supply/demand curve really is higher than most people realize.
For some reason I never think about checking charity shops for books. I don’t know why. I think I assume they will all be old westerns or Danielle Steels or something.
An Gadai, this is Dublin right? Which charity shop do you recommend for a decent selection?
FYI, you may want to Google the long tail to clue into the marketing of such things as used books. Just input “the long tail” w/o the quotation marks. There is indeed a market for such things, but what sells may surprise you. I know a woman who frequents garage sales to get used “airport” books for her husband–the Pattersons and Clancys that cost almost $9 in paperback, but that he doesn’t want to read more than once. Romances and sci-fi are 2 other popular used categories, as are mysteries–hell, I’d better say genre fiction in general.
If I understand correctly, it costs at least $2.38 to send a book via Media Mail (cite).
What corporate entity is this? In the used book business? Economists? What are you talking about?
You’re forgetting the time side of the equation. It is hugely time consuming to look up every book you want to sell and determine a price. There are no computer models that do this. Each book has to be physically inspected for condition. Each book has to be individually looked up. Each book has to be individually compared to the mass of similarly titled books, taking care to note publisher, edition, condition, features, special properties, etc. I do this. It takes about 15 minutes per book to come up with a fair price.
This makes sense to do if you do nothing else all day long at a good bookstore, especially since it would go faster with experience. It makes sense if you’re pricing a small number of valuable books as I do. It makes no sense at all if you have a pile of 1000 ordinary books in front of you and a store to run or a house full of stuff to clear out. I don’t even bother to list books under a certain price. The time it takes is too long.
What’s the proper price for an ordinary two-year-old mystery at a thrift shop or yard sale? No one knows. You price them to get rid of them. Appearing to sell books for a penny is a great strategy. It’s like pricing things at 99 cents. People “know” they’re not cheaper but it still works.
You’re apparently arguing something you’ve never done to people with long experience in the field. That’s not likely to succeed.
Only if it’s one they want to read.
The local public library here, as do many others, has an annual used book sale, where you can buy paperbacks for… I don’t remember what they’re charging nowadays, but it isn’t more than $1. Some of these are snapped right up; others sit around unsold. Many used bookstores offer their cheapest, clearance-priced books for $1 or less.
Just because something’s a book doesn’t mean it’s necessarily worth anything.
There are so many clues in your post that you read one sentence of my post and then pounded out a response (SOP for you) that I shall do you the favor of responding with one sentence only, for your convenience.