Slash and Burn
I’ve been to enough Friends of the Library sales that I’m not usually surprised by the agressive tactics some dealers use to get an edge. But I was stunned by what I saw at the Friends of the Kirkland Public Library’s book sale on Saturday.
I arrived half an hour before the doors opened, earlier than I’d planned. There were a dozen people in line, most of them dealers and book scouts who I recognized. One group of four dealers were chatting together over the stacks of postal tubs they’d brought for hauling books.
A few minutes before opening, the sale’s organizer stepped out of the library (accompanied by a uniformed police officer) and explained the rules of the sale. Dealers should fill one box, he said, then pass it to one of the volunteers before starting on another box. He passed out some labels for people to use on their boxes and went back inside. The doors were opened in short order and everyone rushed into the small meeting room where the sale was being held. Then in a carefully organized fashion, the four dealers who I mentioned before each scooped up a boxload of books from the choice non-fiction tables and shouted, “Full box.” They handed off their filled boxes and, barely glancing at the spines, dumped the next pile of books into their next four boxes. “Full box!”
I’d say that at least two-thirds of the sale’s books were claimed within three minutes. It was entertaining.
After things had settled down, I wandered over to the fiction section — always more hit-and-miss than most non-fiction genres and therefore less appealing to the organized group — and picked out a few books. I noticed that most of the books were almost brand new — published in the last couple of years. This may be a reflection of this affluent suburb’s donor base. Most of the books were likely bought new from end of the aisle displays at Barnes and Noble, read once and donated. (This may be an unfair demographic generalization.)
One of the slash-and-burn dealers (who works at a respectable store in my neighborhood) came over to browse through the fiction. She immediately snipped at a commodity dealer who was hunkered down over his barcode scanner-enabled cell phone scanning ISBNs without glancing at book covers. “You’re the rudest person I’ve ever encountered at one of these book sales,” she said to him. “Me?” he asked, apparently bemused.
This was a bad scene. I paid for my little pile of books and headed back to my side of the lake and made it to the Edmonds Library Book Sale.
Hi. I found this post via a mention on the Bibliophile Bullpen site.
I’ve seen that behavior with the barcode reader at the Friends of the Seattle Public Library booksale. Maybe it’s because I’m not a bookseller, but I don’t understand what’s going on there. Can you explain?
I have observed scooping at several book sales in the Los Angeles area….. I saw it at the Caltech book sale 4-5 yrs ago.
S.C.
I had a completely different experience at the second annual Winnipeg Friends of the Library sale on Saturday. Several dealers/book scouts were at the front of the line and were told that they would be allowed in at 10 a.m. after they paid $2.00 admission. The books were in another room past a craft sale and everyone filed through in the order they were in line outside. Inside they were giving books to each other and there was no sign of any scanners or battling over books. I guess it was the good Canadian manners. However, being nice caused me to miss out on a rare golf book from England and signed Red Skelton worth big bucks that were in the first section I checked.
Andrew,
What you’re seeing at the Seattle book sale are dealers using Scoutpal or another service for web-enabled (and sometimes barcode scanner enabled) cell phones. These services allow someone to enter an isbn and receive details about a book, usually Amazon.com sales rank and Marketplace prices. Some dealers use these tools as practically their only filter when deciding what to buy for resale.
Andrew,
They are devices used by complete amateurs in the bookselling business. People using these devices don’t know much about books. It actually slows things down. Knowledgeable bibliophiles and booksellers can find five to ten times as many good books in the time it takes one of these gulls to look up a single source and try to make reasonable sense of the results.
I’d like to beg to differ, Anonymous! I’m a bookseller who uses “these devices” while also spending MANY hours and days each week in research, reading, and informing myself of current bookselling trends, both online and in various periodicals (not to mention, I have a few degrees in English Lit). In my “neck of the woods,” the “complete amateurs” don’t bother with electronic devices of any kind. They just grab up whatever looks good, break up sets (that I later find pieces of), steal books from others’ piles (like mine!), etc, etc. My co-worker/husband is a computer geek who has created custom software to work with our “devices” and we find it useful to “check” our books against online prices to be sure we’re not wasting our time hauling away books that won’t be profitable. I really can’t understand the bitter animosity here! Yes, there are complete amateurs out there who just scan everything… Their time, their money, their loss. I find that being a knowledgeable bibliophile/bookseller informs what books to chose, and I don’t see why we “gulls” shouldn’t utilize a technology/software (that we’ve invested heavily in!) to help gage the constantly-changing used/collectible book market. Sounds like “Anonymous” has “scanner envy”; get over it!
You’ve confirmed my point.
>we find it useful to “check” our books against >online prices to be sure we’re not wasting our time >hauling away books that won’t be profitable.
Knowledgeable booksellers already know this. And they don’t base their decisions upon a flash-in-the-pan simplistic ISBN lookup.
>I don’t see why we “gulls” shouldn’t utilize a >technology/software (that we’ve invested heavily >in!) to help gage
There lies the truth. You have invested so much needlessly that it is difficult to admit what a waste it is. It is a crutch for amateurs and not worth the time or money. But carry on! Professionals will politely breeze by you.
I tend not to use electronic devices when hunting for books. My hands are full with books and such a device would slow me down while working the stacks.
However, I have no objection if others use devices to check prices. The only difficulty I see is working past such people; they tend to block traffic.
For neophytes in the used book business like me, I began writing up my own ‘take’ on the business being described in the post and comments here. Nobody mentions price above, but at two charity booksales I went to since last August it was the low, low prices being charged for high and low quality titles that really struck me.
The bookstore I work in has stuck itself in a cost-price bind by advertising $3.50 postal charges when these are higher for practically every order online. The owner keeps complaining about ‘postal zones’ here in Canada, where rates rise for deliveries in some byzantine system that’s hard to fathom.
I don’t like the carping about those who ‘know books (33 1/3 rpm vinyl could be tossed in there as well), versus the experts’. In my humble observations to date I observe everybody at every level of the book trade constantly looking up prices and offers online. If they use a cellphone or a keyboard, what is the difference?
I photographed the McGill University Booksale last month. There were ‘pickers’ lined up along one corridor with their boxes and bogs in cached piles. Nobody I witnessed used a scanner device of any sort. Canadians may be more polite (as in waiting in line early), but the first insider stories related to me by my mentors in this business was that some miscreants DO swipe competitors’ treasure cache at these venues. A scene like in some empoverished countries flashed in my mind with a ‘picker’ hiring a ‘native’ lad to watch his books while he picked more . . .
To my mind, this bookdealer business will always have some who survive on low margin profits on popular items versus those who survive on higher margins for rarer titles. And as the higher margins are squeezed by ubiquitous Internet connectivity, the rare book dealers feel threatened, justifiably insecure about the whole technology.
I was at a library booksale is Davis, California this afternoon and I saw at least four or five people frantically working through the aisles with those handheld scanners. The interesting thing is that they were all wearing headphones, so they didn’t need to look at any display of prices. Each person would just pick up a book, scan the barcode and then immediately either put the book back on the shelf or put it into their box.
Can someone tell us what those headphones are saying? Have they been programmed with some sort of investment algorithm so that they give a command like “buy” or “skip,” or do they simply announce the price for an average used copy (”four dollars and fifty cents”)?
Whatever the feedback is, it can’t possibly be more than a word or two, given the time it takes to make the decision.
The sound is just a beep, for yes or no. You simply pre-program your minimum criteria (minimum price/sales rank) and the device tells you yes or no. Loads of fun.
“Knowledgeable booksellers already know this. And they don’t base their decisions upon a flash-in-the-pan simplistic ISBN lookup.”
How can any “knowledgeable bookseller” know EVERYTHING about EVERY BOOK they look at or consider at a sale?! It’s just impossible! And if a book falls outside “my specialty,” why shouldn’t I quickly gage the market online? Seems silly not to…
We don’t base our decisions upon “a flash-in-the-pan simplistic ISBN lookup.” That’s just one tool we use in choosing books at a sale. And it’s a damn good tool when you’re competing in a specific marketplace. Yes, it sucks to think that a little scanner in the hand of an “amateur” can “compete” with wise old booksellers, but…that’s what’s happening out there. I can adjust to it or just complain and completely reject it as “stupid” or “needless”…
“You have invested so much needlessly that it is difficult to admit what a waste it is. It is a crutch for amateurs and not worth the time or money…”
Not so. The time spent creating the program we use (custom designed by us, for us), plus the cost of the device(s) we use was literally paid for 3 times over the 1st 2 times we used it! So, it’s not a waste at all. And, to tell the truth, I’ve learned a lot about how to “scout” without technology (if/when I need to) by utilizing it.
“Professionals will politely breeze by you…”
Actually, it’s been my experience that the “professionals” out there do one of 2 things… 1. totally dismiss it as a waste and give me a pretentious scowl (while leaving behind dozens of valuable books they “rejected” or ignored). Or, 2: they seek me out to ask me how/why/etc I implemented this into my business and listen eagerly.
Interesting discussion, for sure… ; )
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