How to Heartlessly Arbitrage Used Books With a PDA 445
Pickens writes "Michael Savitz writes at Salon how he makes a living armed with a laser bar-code scanner fitted to a Dell PDA. Savitz haunts thrift stores and library book sales to scan hundreds of used books a day and instantly identify those that will get a good price on Amazon Marketplace. 'My PDA shows the range of prices that other Amazon sellers are asking for the book in question,' writes Savitz. 'Those listings offer me guidance on what price to set when I post the book myself and how much I'm likely to earn when the sale goes through.' Savitz writes that on average, only one book in 30 will have a resale value that makes it a "BUY" but that he goes through enough books to average about 30 books sold per day. 'If I can tell from a book's Amazon sales rank that I'll be able to sell it in one day, I might accept a projected profit of as little as a dollar. The more difficult a book will be to sell, the more money the sale needs to promise.' Savitz writes that people scanning books sometimes get kicked out of thrift stores and retail shops and that libraries are beginning to advertise that no electronic devices are allowed at their sales. 'If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?' concludes Savitz."
Nothing shameless (Score:4, Insightful)
Supply and demand. Now if he was scanning them and making torrents, that would be shameless.
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because they love books (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Added value? (Score:5, Insightful)
The added value is that customers looking for a specific book can find a second-hand seller online. I sometimes buy 2nd hand scientific books (the kind that costs $200 new) online; no way that I would consider visiting 20 second-hand stores around here for the faint chance that one of them happens to have that book on the shelf.
The smart thrift store owner would scan the books by themselves and increase the price and/or put them online.
Re:Added value? (Score:4, Insightful)
You don't think there is significant value in him making the books available online where people that want them can find them, then sending the book to the person who wants it?
Taking goods from a place where there is less demand to a place where there is more absolutely adds value - it causes more economic activity to happen which is good for the economy as a whole.
Look at it this way - one of those books, sitting on a shelf in a store is not helping anyone.
This guy buys the book from the store at a price that the store thinks is fair (since they set it), then sells it to someone who wants it at a price that they think is fair (since they choose to buy it).
So, everyone is transacting at a price that they think is fair and everyone is gaining. The store gets cash for their book that was taking up shelf space. The eventual purchaser gets a book that they want. The middle man makes a profit.
Where is the problem?
Re:Added value? (Score:5, Insightful)
He is increasing the availability of sought-after books. Many's the time I've wanted to buy a book from ANYWHERE and not managed it for months only to find it years later on a boot sale or second hand shop (as an example, I once had a copy of Geoffrey Trease's "The Black Banner Players" pass through my hands - one of the rarest books in the world - and incidentally apparently one of the crappiest). The book has a lot more value being able to be purchased from anywhere in the world for the price of postage, especially if it is actually sought-after because it's rare, expensive, limited print run, in a country that doesn't normally sell it, etc.
I don't really see the problem with what he's doing. If I had the time / money / inclination, it sounds like a good way to earn money and always has. My ex used to trawl boot-sales (think garage sales or flea markets if you're American) just before they closed. All the stuff the sellers would normally throw away or put back in their attic for another year would be snapped up for a few pounds for huge bags full. Then she'd sort through them, take out anything of good quality (usually things like baby clothes which are ridiculously expensive when new), wash it, iron it, and sell it on eBay for 50p - £1 per item. Nobody was stopped from buying that stuff from the boot sale itself, but the locality of it meant that most of the young, poor mothers in the country couldn't viably buy the item. The extra value wasn't from washing / ironing (that cost money and rarely made much of a difference because stained tended to stay stained) but from the availability of that item to anyone in the UK. Getting an item for 5p isn't a bargain if it would cost you £40 in fuel to pick it up and there was absolutely no guarantee you wouldn't have a wasted journey. But having someone local pick up all the spare items, and offer them for the price of a stamp to the entire country, with full descriptions and photographs, is more than worth £1 or £2. Profit for my ex, profit for the boot sale seller from stuff they would throw away, profit for eBay, ultra cheap baby clothes that are described exactly and the bad stuff already weeded out for every young mother online.
The value is the availability, and the initial search. He adds that value by doing something completely legal that ANYONE with a brain, or a knowledge of their subject, could do. Every boot sale I've ever been to, there is a queue from 6:30am of various local experts and businesses that swoop in, buy all the good stuff and are onto the next boot sale within ten minutes, because they can recognise the valuable items immediately and snap them up for a good price that the seller is happy with. Many admit that they will then go on to sell that item for near-new prices in their shops. Same thing, slightly less "ethical" and slightly more "business" but hell - they make money, the seller makes money, nobody gets hurt and someone else gets what they consider a bargain when they rebuy it from their specialist shop (because that's easier than trawling boot sales in the hope you'll find some item you're after).
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:5, Insightful)
That makes no sense. A sale is a sale is a sale. The stores should be thankful that the guy is moving their products. That allows them to buy more and keep their shelves stocked. If they don't like it, they should set their prices better.
If you want books that no one else wants to read, then those books are still there. This guy isn't snapping them up.
Firefly was canned because no one was watching it. Book stores close because no one buys their books. This guy is buying books... lots of them. A bookstore being low on inventory because of good sales is a good problem to have. You should try some sort of car analogy instead. :)
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:5, Insightful)
You spend more than $3 by losing the all day searching for a book on dozens of stores. He makes it cheaper if you count all the costs, not just the markup prices.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:1, Insightful)
Supply and demand. Now if he was scanning them and making torrents, that would be shameless.
Only if short-term cannibalism-capitalism is the only thing that counts.
Basically he is making it harder and more expensive to acquire books and thus education, which particularly affects people with less money (and usually already lower education).
Heartless? (Score:2, Insightful)
How is this "heartless" - as previously stated, people are purchasing books at a price that the seller has deemed fair and are moving them to another market where they have identified the potential to make a profit. Since when did it become taboo to make a fair profit? If they're willing to search out the books and put forth the effort then they're certainly entitled to reaping benefit for their efforts. It's called work. I find the concept inspiring; here's someone who identified an opportunity and is using it to earn money without taking advantage of anyone.
If I donate to the library for their sale it is for several reasons. 1) Recycling the books 2) Providing the library a source of revenue 3) Hoping that someone else will derive enjoyment from something that I have previously possessed. If there's a 2a) inserted by a third party it has not diminished any of the reasons I had and actually adds an additional benefit. All of the statements about the outlets using technology to maximize their profits are well taken, but there are explicit and implicit costs to the application of this technology and the cost/benefit may not merit the effort as compared to pricing them by an algorithm.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:5, Insightful)
How do you figure that?
He is taking high desirability items from a low-volume local market and reselling them in a high-volume global market. If anything he is making it easier for people to acquire the books that they want. As far as the difference in price goes: that is true of anyone who trades between different markets in any product. Why should there be special rules that make it immoral in this case?
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless they don't have the money.
"Free markets" are about the worst way to educate and bring poor people out of poverty. No, I said that wrong. Free markets are a fantasy used to sell a system where wealth only flows upward.
Analyzing, analyzing, analyzing... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:3, Insightful)
I can easily "envision" that some poor student, who's already stretched to the point of poverty and in some $7 per hour work study, not being able to afford to walk into a Barnes and Noble and buy books.
You're making the mistake of thinking that "poor people" are all empty vessels, unable to do anything on their own. Think instead of the young person who's struggled to make it to a point where education is a possibility and already has the will to read, to learn. For him, a $1 library sale is a chance to stock a bookshelf that could make a huge difference.
There's a good reason the person with the PDA trying to cherry pick library sales feels like a douche. Because he's doing something shitty. Now, if the poor kid who was trying to educate himself was making a few bucks reselling those books, that would be a different story, but I doubt the turd with the PDA is in that position.
It is shameful (Score:2, Insightful)
It's Slate, btw, not Salon. And what seems shameful, at least to me, is that it completely debases one of the main purposes of thrift stores, library sales and yard sales, and that is community need. Yeah, there's some money-making, but most libraries aren't actually expecting to make much real money on a booksale -- they're there to build goodwill and community. They still depend on donors, grants and tax money for operations. In fact, Libraries are much more social than commercial institutions. Same with yard sales -- it's a community event, and a way to clear out your basement and/or garage a little, but when it becomes a way to make money, it starts to feel creepy. Thrift stores too hardly ever try to make full profit on what they sell -- they're raising money, often for the poor, and trying to help out the poor by underselling donated goods.
By coming along and skimming that community-building profit margin off, what Savitz is doing is saying that the community means less to him than the profit he can glean from it. It's a fundamentally ruthless position and, while not at all illegal, it's certainly shameful.
Because it is shameful. (Score:4, Insightful)
If it's possible to make a decent living selling books online, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?
If it's possible to make a decent living giving unjustified loans/selling alcohol or drugs/etc. to people who're already down, then why does it feel so shameful to do this work?
Seriously, you're being a leech, a bottom feeder, and you're right in feeling ashamed. Actually, that feeling speaks for you - there's hope for you yet, maybe.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:2, Insightful)
If they don't have the money, maybe they should consider using the library to get the book? That's where a lot of my books come from, and they're free...
Feel Like A Buzzard? (Score:4, Insightful)
Although employment generally is very similar to prostitution, one way or another, we like to hide that sad fact from ourselves. Finding a book to resell is probably dredging up feelings rather like a wino going through trash to collect aluminum cans. It should not dredge up those feelings but the fact that you are doing your scavenging in view of others is bothering you. Actually you provide a great service to people but then again so do buzzards.
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:2, Insightful)
Until there's a contract to that effect - e.g. "buy 10 books get this sale item for half off" then that's not the buyer's problem legally or ethically. This is no different than the network execs saying not watching the commercials by using a DVR is stealing (pg 8 here - web.mit.edu/cms/Events/mit2/Abstracts/DerekKompare.pdf)
If this continues, the end result is that book prices in both the local marked of the bookstore and the end buyer both move closer to the average - though that means higher prices one place and lower prices elsewhere. So why is it fairer to insist the cheap books stay in one community, making someone elsewhere pay more?
Re:Breaking an unspoken social contract (Score:1, Insightful)
That's probably because willingness to pay is restricted by ability to pay, which is not correlated with need.
He should feel bad. (Score:2, Insightful)
He feels bad for precisely the same reason that a man who pulls up to a soup kitchen in a Mercedes and casually takes a seat should feel bad. Thrift shops are understood to be charitable organisations, facilitating the spread of unwanted items to the needy for prices consistently lower than the normal free market. They are often run by volunteers who wouldn't know a thing about setting up an online presence. Buying an item or two won't hurt their stocks much, but to comb through their merchandise every day removing the most valuable items is stealing directly from the pockets of those who donated the items in the first place.
This is a job that will disappear (Score:5, Insightful)
Two things:
Someone will make up a better way and sell it to the bigger book stores and thrift stores. The will relegate this to a smaller and smaller pool, as competition (thanks to articles like this) heats up for the dwindling supply of non-internet-enabled stores.
Second: the pay sucks. This guy, who admits that you can make up to $1000 a week (more if you employ your family/other people) spends 80 hours doing all the work, including listing, selling, and mailing.
Okay...so he's grossing $12.50 hr, on average. Great. When the economy picks up and he can get a "real" job paying him twice that, this option will probably go away. Presuming he's not ADHD or otherwise impaired, anyone with this kind of organizational skill is probably going to be gold for somebody who can pay him $45-60k/yr plus benefits. For 40-50 hours a week of work. He'll get his life back (presuming he ever had one), and get better pay and benefits.
This is the depression era trashpicker. They will always exist, but it's mostly a fad that rears its head in bad times. The only twist to it is that the internet has made the trashpickers job "clean".
Re:There is nothing wrong with doing this (Score:3, Insightful)
The point is, those are no buggy-whip manufacturers, there is an actual demand for those stores.
There was an actual demand for buggy-whips while buggies were being phased out, too. Now there is virtually none. I shouldn't have to draw you a map.
And the author of the article takes away from one part of the population in order to leech of the other part - generating more revenue for Amazon in the process.
I don't see a leech. I see a person connecting people with that which they want to purchase. The store owner is free to set the terms of the sale.
Same as those people that raid flea markets in order to resell on eBay.
"Raid"? Now you are engaging in the same bullshit as people who equate copyright infringement with theft. The buyer and the seller come to an agreement and by the terms of First Sale law the buyer is now free to resell that product under terms which they find equitable and which do not conflict with law. The flea market "raiders" are performing the same service to society as the book scanners; they are doing the legwork so that the population at large does not have to. This is the beginning of a process which ends with UPS (or another carrier) delivering the package. If you can be paid for delivering, why not for picking up? By extension, not all of us can afford personal assistants to do our shopping; this person is performing a task which would be carried out by such a person had we one to apply to the job, and like a shipping carrier, they are performing it more efficiently than legions of humans each on a mission to pick up one book.
You are, essentially, complaining about progress. You may cry about its inexorable crawl all day, but you will not change the simple fact that as a species we would rather have more efficiency and be able to buy the things we want than the ability to wander around all day from shop to shop looking for it, and this person is a symptom of that fact rather than a disease. They are not a bottom-feeder, they are a facilitator. They are doing the job for the purchasers and performing a service. If they are making an ass of themselves in the process that is a separate problem.
Craigslist tried to force people to buy things locally by not providing long-range search. Look how that turned out; there's dozens of tools for searching Craigslist and it produces orders of magnitudes more page views than a simple location-aware search.
Re:Added value? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd assume he wants first edition, not a reissue.
Re:Lots of reasons... (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, the essence of the free market is a society where everyone thinks 'fuck you'.
Re:Breaking an unspoken social contract (Score:3, Insightful)
"However, a person who raises prices for truly needed goods during a crisis also ensures that the goods go to the people who have the most critical need (as measured by willingness to pay), yet are still widely despised."
That's because for some bizarre reason, it appears to be the warlords who have the most critical need for every single provision during a crisis. Bizarre, I know, but somehow they are always the ones with the most willingness to pay.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:3, Insightful)
These scanners aren't doing the poor any favors at all.
We already have a social structure to make books available to the poor - a public library.
All this guy did is identify and profit from an inefficiency in the market. If you get worked up and indignant every time someone does this, prepare for a very disappointing life. In my opinion (and I know you didn't ask), your indignation should be aimed at your locality for not providing these same books for free via a public library. Why were you, as a poor person, going through thrift shops instead of borrowing from the library? The answer to that question is the actual problem here.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why aren't libraries using these scanners and pricing their books appropriately?"
Because their mission is to help people in their communities get better access to books, not make a profit.
Because it's a Public Service (Score:3, Insightful)
Because thrift store and libraries do not exist simply to collect, store, and present the books to be used for purely commercial purposes. After all, the library and thrift store could easily do the same thing to make money. There is professional licensing for such arbitrageurs – for example auctioneers, who pays licensing fees, etc. These sales are not there to enrich you. They are there to find a good home for donated books, to provide work opportunities for people that might not otherwise have them, and to survive as organizations doing work for the public good.
Savitz's regular use of this resource to supply his commercial enterprise is unethical and is probably illegal. Is he registered in his state as a profit-making enterprise? Does he collect appropriate sales taxes on his sales? Does he compensate the library and thrift store for their labor? Does he report this income on his IRS-1040?
If my donations to Goodwill were destined only to line someone's pockets, I would quit donating used articles and instead destroy and discard them.
Re:scumbag (Score:5, Insightful)
The main point of thrift stores is to sell low-cost goods for the needy.
Please provide a citation for this. I was always under the impression that the purpose of thrift stores was to provide fundraising for the charity that supports them (Salvation Army, Goodwill, ect). It is a way for those charities to monetize the goods that have been donated to them. The result is that they underprice the goods so that they can get a higher turnover. While this may help some poor people in the area buy cheap items, I have always understood that as just an incidental advantage. Arbitrage like mentioned in the article would let thrift stores increase their prices while maintaining turnover rates, which would get more money to the charity. I think that the advantage of providing more money to the charitable organization (with which they can run soup kitchens, shelters, ect) would more than offset the increased cost to the customers.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:3, Insightful)
Banning shoppers seems like a thoughtless response from these store owners. What difference does it make to a store owner if the buyer is going to resell the item they just bought? If you don't like it, raise your price. Otherwise, either sell it to anyone or take it off the shelf. Are we soon going to have to endure interviews about what we plan to do with the item before we're allowed to buy it?
"How come you wouldn't sell to that guy?"
"Who, him? Because he was going to resell that book at a higher price!"
"Oh. But you're willing to sell it to me at the advertised price?"
"Yea, sure..."
"So you're making about 3% of your books off-limits to the only guy that wants to buy them. And if I don't buy those items, you're happy just being stuck with them on your shelves instead of having the money?"
"..."
Re:Lots of reasons... (Score:2, Insightful)
"Score:5, Insightful" does not do justice to your comment.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:3, Insightful)
... Last time I checked bookstores were not a social program. ...
Public libraries, and their book sales are however ABSOLUTELY a social program. Notice that word "public"? It is the public supporting it through taxes for the common good. And all libraries, except for private college libraries are public libraries. In addition, thrift stores generally operate as a form of social program. And it is from these two entities (public libraries and thrift stores) that the scanner gets the majority of his stock.
Re:scumbag (Score:2, Insightful)
The fact that you don't understand there is NO difference means there is no point in having a discussion with you.
I'm sorry you believe what this jackass does for a living is a-ok. But it's not.
Re:So why don't the sellers do this? (Score:3, Insightful)
Libraries, in particular, have no experience with having any sort of book catalog system or keeping track of books going in and out or having to look and enter any information about books when they get said books. Also, they have no computer system that could keep track of any of that, and certainly have no 'register' type system where people come up with the books they want and their absence is marked in any central database, and there's no website where people can look any of that that's hooked into the database.
Wait, made a typo. s/no//
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:2, Insightful)
If you want to restrict sales to the poor, why the fuck don't you restrict sales in some manner?
You can't ask for proof of income, but you sure as hell could restrict sales to people with library cards and only let them buy three books a week.
The reason they don't is that either your local library is very stupid, or you don't understand what's going on and that's not why they sell books. The fact you call it a library 'bookstore' rather indicates one or the other.
Libraries sell books they don't have the space for. They are not selling them to get books to poor people, as that is stupid inefficient. They lend books to poor people, the book selling is not some sort of damn charity, it's a way to get rid of stuff they don't need.
Your library might be trying to do it as charity, for some totally stupid reason, but if so it's possibly the dumbest charity I've ever heard of.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:3, Insightful)
There is a flaw in your argument. Your argument falls apart if your global market is not larger than your local market... the problem is that you are arguing as if that applies to one local market but your argument isn't valid unless the cumulative total of ALL local markets are (substantially) smaller than your global market.
If not then it is quite possible that those who can't afford to shop on your global marketplace and purchase instead from the cumulative local marketplaces of the world are in fact the majority and not the minority you propose them to be.
This adds absolutely no value to the economy, the books sell anyway. He isn't enhancing the value of the book in any way he is simply inflating the price. By doing so he is devaluing the purchasing power of the dollar AND robbing society of any value he might be adding to our economy doing something productive.
This rewards the lazy person who would rather spend extra money to sit on their rear and punishes the active person who will work a little harder by going to the bookstore themselves in order to save. The first leads to inflation while the second does the opposite. The first is the pattern of behavior that has recently culminated in a crash of the global economy.
Thrift stores (Score:2, Insightful)
If they determine the customer is shopping with the intention to resell, they typically react negatively. I have been banned from shopping from a local thrift store for no other reason than the owner had learned that I had resold items on eBay. From the owner's point of view I had taken away opportunities for less fortunate people to purchase these same items. Here are some additional details, however.
I had already learned from employees at this thrift store that they frequently received more items than the building could contain. Each week, they gathered up items in the store that had not sold (I believe the items had about a four week period before they were gathered up). If they were glass, they were smashed. If they were clothing items they were bagged and prepped to be shipped off to a company that shreds unwanted fabric and packs it into insulation used in the manufacture of automobiles. I presume the glass was sent out for recycling. From what I gather, the company that made insulation paid the thrift store for the fabric and covered all shipping costs.
My point is - if we were denying the poor the benefit of obtaining these items, they were being replaced each week in such volume that would result in a significant amount of the items being destroyed/recycled/sold to a third party. So the reality was that there was more than enough to go around.
Another point of view is that we were taking advantage of the thrift store by reselling their product for a higher price than what we paid. I fail to see how this is a problem. What anyone who does this is doing is work. It takes time to sort through items in any resale environment and determine which are valuable and which are not. Any thrift store owner or employee knows this. It also takes time to take those items into a different forum. For example - to list an item on eBay it is typically necessary to provide detailed photographs of the item in question, create a listing and respond to questions about the item. Upon the completion of the sale it takes time to properly package and ship the item. So in effect, it is not that the item itself is being sold for a higher price, it is that the resellers are being compensated for their time, which is, in effect, a service.
My final point is that when the owner of a thrift store, yard/garage sale, or library gets offended that someone is reselling their items, it is hypocrisy. These individuals who are offended are already engaging in resale. Of the three, the thrift store owner is the most guilty because in most cases he or she is reselling product that was given to them freely as a donation. Unless the thrift store is being operated as not-for-profit and all proceeds are being donated to charity, they are usually making excellent money from a small business owner's perspective. In our current economy, thrift stores are one of the few business models that are doing rather well. Therefore when these individuals become upset with or feel threatened by resellers who purchase their product, it is ultimately a problem of greed - they do not like the idea that someone else will sell an item for more than they (the thrift store owner) was able to sell it. I have a simple answer for these people - try reselling these items on eBay or Amazon. Hire the staff to do it if you do not have the time to do it yourself. I predict, however, that the profit margin will not be as large when compared to the overhead of hiring people to do this and the amount of time necessary to invest in order for it to be successful.
If the above offends, perhaps capitalism is not your bag, baby.