Because it was in the NYT, David Streitfeld’s weekend column about “feeling sheepish” about buying and selling used books online has gotten a fair amount of attention even though it’s purely personal. Working from impression rather than fact, he decides the liquid online market for personal buying and selling of books is suddenly to blame for the industry’s troubles though it has been brewing for years. “Don’t blame this carnage on the recession or any of the usual suspects, including increased competition for the reader’s time or diminished attention spans. What’s undermining the book industry is not the absence of […]
Used books
Used Booksellers: Megalisters vs. Hand-Sellers
The NYT looks at how software drives the low-margin business of selling used books online in quantity: “The state of the art in used-book selling these days seems to be less about connoisseurship than about database management. With the help of software tools, so-called megalisters stock millions of books and sell tens of thousands a week through Amazon, AbeBooks and other online marketplaces. Some sellers don’t even own their wares….” Thrift Books–with 180 employees and about 3 million books for sale–“acquires its stock literally by the ton, usually from libraries, secondhand stores and charities.” They log the ISBNs and post […]