I was in a bookstore, one of those cheapo ones that everything is 50% more or off. Anyway I was looking in the Computer Books. Some guys comes over gets a whole bunch of books and goes to check out.
Then all of a sudden this guy, who is apprently is the owner starts yelling that this guy trying to check out is a reseller cause he’s buying multiple copies of the same book, and he doesn’t want resellers in his store. The man trying to buy the book said “he wasn’t a reseller he was buying books for his work and wanted to give them to his employees.” The owner (I think) said he was banned from his store and so the guy left looking disgusted.
I looked at the stack where he got the books and it appeared to be some sort of Intro to Word book for $3.99. He probably took like 5 or so books.
Whether or not he was a reseller, I don’t know but why would this guy care if someone resells his books. I was thinking he still gets the same money whether he sold 5 to the same person or 1 to 5 different people.
There must be a good reason though, any clue?
Ego. The shop owner can’t admit to himself that he might have underpriced the books, and that another guy can clean up the difference. :rolleyes:
Probably due to the way book sales work - in Australia at least. Anyone with a book shop can buy books wholesale from publishers or suppliers and if they don’t sell them they can give them back for credit on other stock. Remaindered books (the cheapo stuff) is sold to the retailer with no possibility of return. I imagine someone selling remaindered books would not take kindly to a retailer buying them to sell at full retail and possibly returning them as unsold stock.
I’ve occasionally seen signs in stores that said that no one can buy more than, say, three copies of any one remaindered book. However, the store owner is a jerk if he yelled at a customer for buying too many copies of one book. He should have just politely informed the customer that there was a limit on the number of copies to be bought. By yelling at the customer and banning him from the store, he alienated not just that customer but all the other customers in the store at that moment. He probably alienated a lot of people who will hear of the story of the yelling and banning from that customer. He deserves to go broke for doing something so stupid.
Surely if the retailer hasn’t bought that item from the wholesaler in the first place, there’s no way he can return it?
If I buy 50 copies of Necrophilia For Dummies from Acme books and sell them all, and then buy 10 copies from you, I can send them back to the publisher if they have no identifying marks.
When publishers sell remaindered books to bookstores, they make sure there is no way of mistaking them for full-price books (better to make it impossible than to have to constantly sort things out). They either mark the book (a line of magic marker across the top, for instance) or, if the entire edition is remaindered, they indicate the fact on their computer so the ISBN number won’t be returnable for credit.
It’s also highly unlikely a bookstore owner would be so protective of the publishers.
The example is one of store policy, which doesn’t need any justification if the store owner wants to set it. It seems nonsensical to me – whether the buyer resells the book or not, the store owner makes the same amount of money. Maybe more, since he might not sell any copies of that book except to the reseller.