I think he means that when hobbyists are shut out of the secondary market, they are forced to buy their books on the primary market which DOES result in a payday for the author (note to HMS_Irruncible: if I didn’t get your meaning right, I’d greatly appreciate you making another attempt at clarification).
If I’m right, the disconnect for me is because my understanding of the “book sharks” described in the OP leads me to suspect that they’re not interested in buying up titles that are still in print (and therefore actually EXIST on the primary market).
I don’t know when you were a school kid, but when I was, it was even more limiting, because Toys “R” Us required anyone under sixteen to be accompanied by an adult to enter the store.
In my experience, there are three kinds of “thrift store”:
The first is run by a strictly local charity, with volunteers and gets donations that they re-sell in a church or inexpensive storefront. All proceeds to to the good works that they support. They sell to whoever wants to come in and pay the prices that they have set.
The second is a charity that collects needed things that low income families need. They want mainly things like furniture, clothing, especially for children, and things that a single mother might need, or a woman leaving a violent relationship. Things for people on the street are often needed too. Note that the first example above may ALSO run this type of charity - but they collect needed things for low income people, and don’t run their stores for them alone.
The third is larger “charities” that collect free stuff and resell it, with a portion of the proceeds to charity, and a large chunk to the board members and CEO’s who run the place. They also don’t care who buys their stuff, but they are much more careful to sift the good stuff out and get the most profit for it.
Bottom line - thrift stores in my area are most decidedly NOT like stores for low income people to go to for good deals.
In the above, the key phrase is “why certain items are more valuable than others.” And that is an important difference. As I mentioned above, I collect rare books, and the difference between a first edition of Ian Fleming’s Goldfinger and a first edition of Peter O’Donnell’s Modesty Blaise is vast. Both are British spy thrillers, both were published in the 1960s, and both were based on established characters. So they should be about the same, right?
Wrong. Among collectors, there is demand for Goldfinger; there is little demand for Modesty Blaise. Oh, sure, a first edition of Modesty will cost in the hundreds, but a first edition of Goldfinger will cost in the thousands. But demand is not the only answer–there’s also condition, dust jackets, number of copies published, “quirks” (such as the crease in the skull on Goldfinger’s hardback cover, but not the dust jacket), and so on. Authenticators and appraisers help a lot here.
The ignorant reseller who thinks he or she can buy Modesty at a decent price, and flip it for the price of Goldfinger, mainly because they’re both British spy novels and published at roughly the same time, doesn’t know why Goldfinger is more valuable, nor why Modesty will ever command the same price as Goldfinger. “Ooh, this looks old; I’d better grab it,” describes these people perfectly.
This would have some validity if this were remotely like how the used book market worked. The supply of used books vastly exceeds the demand and, as a result, the median value of a used book is zero. The types of books most likely to appeal to a poor family are of the least interest to a reseller. The 3 year old John Grisham and the 83rd printing of Twilight have no value on the resale market because millions of copies of them were printed and now only a few people are interested in buying a used copy. The books resellers are picking tend to be obscure, specialist and of niche value.
If toy companies wanted children to play with those toys, they would have just made more of them. They’re collectible precisely because toy companies make them in limited quantities as things not intended to be played with. Collectible toys are not intrinsically more fun to play with than non-collectibles. Unless a kid happens to particularly care about how rare the toy they’re playing with is, they have a bajillion other choices of toys that are going to deliver them much more fun to play with at a much more affordable price.
That’s like feeling sad that the truck driver shipping a pallet of mountain bikes doesn’t have a deep appreciation of the beauty of the great outdoors. The person buying the book from the reseller is going to have a deep appreciation for the book, as evidenced by them going on the internet and making a special order. The reseller is just a laborer in the supply chain in charge of getting that book to the ultimate buyer, to them it might just as well be cabbages or diamonds or coal.
Twice, I have sold a book to its own author, and in one case, it was a nonfiction book that was a decent best-seller when it came out, and AFAIK is still in print. My guess is that she knew someone who wanted a signed copy, and she didn’t have a near-new copy handy.
Then you’d have to explain what “ordering at me thru the mask like he worked there.” is supposed to mean. He’s upset that the person is speaking with a mask on while also bitching about him “pawing over” everything? Did he want this person to take his mask off when talking to him? Really his whole OP makes very little sense.
Modified from the OP:
They have a ______ _____ that ______ with their ______ to place ______ ______ on ______. They hang around in ______ stores and ______ anything that fits their ______ ______. Trying to ______ a ______ it seems.
Do thrift stores rotate their stock of books or do the books just stay on the shelf until they are sold? Typically, the books seem like just a bunch of junky books. I could imagine many of them staying on the shelves until the store closed. A book like “Master Microsoft 98 Today!” may never find a buyer. Does the thrift store treat the books on the shelves as a temporary stop before the dumpster, or are they more like a “no kill shelter” where the books can live out their lives on the shelves no matter how long that takes? With the amount of books that get donated, it seems like a thrift store is either going to have to trash donated books or books that are already on the shelves. One benefit to the sharks is that they cull the books on the shelves, which should enable more books to be put on the shelves in their place.
Book Sharks are conceivably providing positive economic impact by taking a book that may not sell at a Peoria Thrift Shop, and moving it to a more robust sales channel, with thousands of potential customers.
Scalpers are not. Neckbeards buying up toys and pokemon cards to sell online are not. They are not moving product from a limited sales channel to a channel with more customers, they’re moving product from a robust sales channel everyone can use to a sales channel only the rich can use.
It depends on the store, and the books. This whole rotating-stock thing also applies to furniture, clothing, knick-knacks, jewelry, household supplies, seasonal items, and pretty much anything else they may stock.