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."
Depends what you want... (Score:5, Interesting)
Lots of reasons... (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
Perhaps the people running these sales want them to have more of a community feel, and either anticipate or know from past experience that allowing professional sellers to come in and take on-the-spot digital assessments of books will disrupt the existing selling environment.
Here are some potential motivations for the ban that I can think up off the top of my head:
scumbag (Score:4, Interesting)
Because it makes you a bottom-feeder. And no one likes bottom-feeders. You're taking the generosity and good will of others who are trying to help the less fortunate and turning it into your own personal profit machine. What, has the "stealing candy from babies and reselling it online" market dried up so quickly? This is right up there with people that go around to thrift stores buying up all the decent items and reselling them for 10-100x more in their "antique" stores, leaving nothing but crap for those that are in need. Sorry dude, but you're a scum-sucking lowlife.
There is nothing wrong with doing this (Score:3, Interesting)
Indeed, by doing this you are probably saving untold energy by preventing people from having to search for books.
All the buggy-whip manufacturers bitching about how this will change the used book landscape have missed the point entirely. There will time when books will go away completely, and this is only an interim step. In a hundred years of technological progress don't you think that hardcopy books are going to be a specialty, boutique item?
Let the buggy-whip manufacturers die. Accept that buying used books via Amazon is easier and indeed better for everyone than driving from store to store. Sure, book browsing will be deprecated. But then, ALL retail outlets will eventually go away except for boutiques and big box stores. There's really no need for anything in-between and such a business will always be less efficient than one which has no physical presence. The only thing that depends on physical presence is impulse buying, where you get someone in your store and sell them crap they don't need.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:0, Interesting)
Library books were purchased by the state. The sales are designed as a way that people without much money can buy books to encourage reading.
Thrift stores are often charities, designed for pretty much the same purpose. Neither is set up so some douchebag can make a profit off of them.
Re:Lots of reasons... (Score:5, Interesting)
Connecting buyers and sellers. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:5, Interesting)
Because it rises the price of books for everyone else. Rather than getting a book for $2 from the bookstore, I'll have to buy it for $5 from Amazon.
This guy is simply a new version of a ticket scalper. He's a parasite and will hopefully get banned from every bookstore. Every single penny he makes comes from someone else's pocket; he simply monopolizes a resource and profiteers from it, contributing absolutely nothing to the economy. He's scum.
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, local used-books shops might be accurately pricing their books for the local market, which could differ from the nationwide market on the internet. If the local stores were forced to price to the national market, they might not be able to sell those books to their usual customers, and not even the used-book arbitrage traders would want to buy them. This could, in the long run, significantly reduce the thrift bookstore revenues and drive some out of business.
And like GP pointed out, some of the hidden treasures in the book stores act as sales to draw in customers to the store, who might buy other books as well. If the arbitrage trades come in and snatch up the "sale" items, the stores are forced to eat the discount instead of generating more revenue.
Re:Breaking an unspoken social contract (Score:5, Interesting)
As someone for whom the web is the only place I can find such "treasures" in their original language (I'm not from an English speaking country), stopping him from doing what he's doing deprives me from actually reading the books.
Re:Lots of reasons... (Score:5, Interesting)
The solution, though, isn't to ban PDAs. It's to kick people out when they act like a tool. It's unfortunate that we have to do that but it's the society we've all created, where manners are held in low esteem; turn on the television and all you'll see is a bunch of people being rude to each other on every channel, unless you can find a Bob Ross rerun on PBS... happy little trees. If you want this to change, then you need to go out and aggressively demand good manners. Every time you receive bad ones, comment. Refuse to do business with the impolite where possible. Let's create a useful stratification of society, between those who think of others and those who think fuck you.
Why aren't the books doing this themselves? (Score:4, Interesting)
Why aren't the books doing this themselves?
The reason's simple. These retailers make a profit by offering the opportunity to find a precious gem in amongst a ton of crap books. If someone takes all the gems, the viability of the stores diminish. If the stores did this themselves, no one would come to the physical store, and they'd make a pittance selling the few worthwhile books.
So the underlying problem is that the stores are unsustainable, and the guy with the scanner exacerbates the problem.
I'm afraid the second hand book trade is dying for all the wrong reasons. You simply can't build a long term bookselling system on greed and hoarding. By now all books should be freely available online in a searchable format and unencumbered by DRM (but not necessarily free to access). But again there are problems with that because too many people would just take the books (in fact that's already happening).
I wonder about the HUGE mark ups for some used. (Score:2, Interesting)
Then there are books like Experimental Methods in RF Design [amazon.com] that are selling for a huge amount of money used because, I think, Amazon has the new one listed misspelled [amazon.com].
The used book market can be really weird.
Information asymmetry (Score:3, Interesting)
A completely free market works best when there is no information asymmetry between the parties involved in a transaction. If the buyer knows exactly what the seller knows and vice versa. Scanning books like this creates information asymmetry by giving information to the buyer that is unavailable* to the seller. The seller corrects this by placing limits on the marketplace in order to maintain as good an information balance as possible.
This is exactly how textbook capitalism is supposed to work. Of course, it's ideal if the party placing limits on the marketplace is not a party involved in the transaction in order to avoid bias towards one side or another. That's how governments become involved in regulating the market. Of course, in practice, there are a lot more variables that have an effect on information symmetry and party bias. But something as simple as this is easily explained by basic free market principles.
* Of course, the information is available to the seller, but it's just that the seller is unwilling to procure that information for one reason or another. The seller finds that correcting the information balance by limiting information access to the buyer is easier than correcting it by having to access that information themselves.
Re:Lots of reasons... (Score:5, Interesting)
The libraries don't even need a scanner to accomplish the same thing. Just trawl through their database and look up the Amazon price / volume. Filter out the more valuable volumes, separate them, mark them for prices that are closer to market value. And anything the locals don't buy, list online.
Do that and you remove the easy profit from scalpers, removing the problem.
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:5, Interesting)
Cheaper has proper meaning only if you include all the cost inputs, not just the "time expensed".
Re:Heartless? (Score:3, Interesting)
There's nothing wrong with wearing a suit either. A lot of the worlds rich and successful wear suits .... yet "suit" is an insult in some circles.
He feels dirty for doing this and maybe there's a reason.
Scanners are allowed (Score:5, Interesting)
This may come as a shock, but the summary isn't *gasp* fully accurate. Scanners are allowed at the library sale they say forbids it. It's actually rather interesting-- the early "member's only" hour forbids scanners, then they let scanners in during the open sale hours. So it's a nice compromise between "let people browse" and "let the book sellers make a profit", they're just giving first crack to readers, then a fair shake to sellers afterwards. Neat compromise, that.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:5, Interesting)
I agree. I've been at garage sales where people with these scanners show up. They're going to have to do some work to earn that profit that I wasn't willing to do (and knew about at the time). I only wish more of them would bargain with me. If a guy with the PDA came to me and said the price was too high, I'd ask him what he'd want to give me.....recognizing that he wants some level of profit margin. At my last garage sale, I was sold some stuff for $10 that a guy felt he could get more for on Craigslist.....I helped him load it into his car. Had I wanted to go through the effort to sell it on Craigslist, I would have. And for the record, these were "neighborhood garage sales" so I didn't do anything other than drag the crap to my driveway and wait for people to show up.....it's all about minimal effort for me.
So, if the library/thrift store/whatever wants to put forth the effort, they'll get the reward. If they just want to move it, these guys with scanners will be able to make their own profit.
Re:Politics of envy (Score:3, Interesting)
At our local library sale, these people sweep in as soon as the sale opens, snatching up anything that has resale value. For computer books that means anything written recently relating to popular topics. The same thing happens in many other sections and genres. For those of us who work nearby but can't get to the sale until lunch, it means anything we might be interested in will be long gone. As a result, we no longer even bother going. The library may have sold the 150 books bought by these entrepreneurs, but how many others did they fail to sell because people didn't come and browse?
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:5, Interesting)
Basically he is making it harder and more expensive to acquire books and thus education
He might be making it more expensive for the 100-1000 or so people that were going to attend the local library sale, but he then increases supply to the Amazon Marketplace, which will reduce the price for the millions who shop on Amazon.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:1, Interesting)
Except that at least in the library sale case the student had the opportunity to read the book for free while it was in circulation or to read one of the thousands of other books in the library. If the students is on a"$7/hr work study" he has access to a college library and while not necessarily that particular book, certainly books on the same topic (at least for nonfiction). The demographic where this could make a difference is for poor children/workers. Regardless, public libraries themselves are probably the better option than the sales for the poor. As to thrift stores, if someone buys the item at the posted price, the thrift store should be happy it made a sale. The charities run them as an income stream, not to necessarily sell to the poor (hint, lots of hipsters hit them up for party/halloween parties.
Re:Information asymmetry (Score:5, Interesting)
> The seller finds that correcting the information balance by limiting
> information access to the buyer is easier than correcting it by having
> to access that information themselves.
Easier than having access? The only ease of access that PDA guy has in his favor is the laser barcode scanner; which saves him all of five seconds of typing the UPC into a search engine. We're not talking about information asymmetry here. We're talking about a guy who's willing to put in a modicum of effort vs. the sheer laziness of others.
I comparison shop with my iPhone all the time. And the closest thing to flack I've ever gotten from a brick and mortar store is a polite request to let them try to match the offer if I find a better price online. Informed consumers via always-on portable internet access are a fact of life in this day and age. Businesses need to adapt or die.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:2, Interesting)
As to "where", I can't say. As to "when", then I guess the answer is probably not very recently. We seem to vhave allowed ourselves to fall into an ethical hole that informs us that "anything goes" when it comes to making a profit.
If a public library sheds some of its stock which is paid for by the public purse, then that sale is not a legitimate target for plundering by speculators. What is legitimate is for genuine readers prepared to take or make the time to sort through the books to have first grabs at the books for personal enjoyment and/or education,
Yes, it is about giving something back to the community. There are many whose only means of purchasing worthwhile reading material is through such sales, especially if they read a lot. I've been in that boat myself (though nowadays I more often tend to prowl 2nd-hand books online via Amazon, alibris or ABE). Let's not forget that there are still many who don't have access to the internet.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:3, Interesting)
The only problem I have there is wealth disparity is becoming so high that .5% of the population is starting to get *everything* (most of the wealth, most of the income, most of the best books- which sit unused on a shelf looking valuable), most of the best property (which sits unused 300 days a year).
The next 10% is pretty happy. But the bottom 90% is increasingly pissed at this "let them eat cake attitude". The wealthy better reign their greed in a bit and start sharing the wealth (literally) or things are going to turn ugly as they have repeatedly in the past.
As people lose hope, they turn mean.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:4, Interesting)
And what about the poor people in other areas?
Don't they count?
He drives the price down on amazon marketplace by increasing the supply.
A handful of people who turn up at the library sale late don't get a chance to buy the books at a low price (though by your logic rich people shouldn't buy from second hand shops or thrift stores at all and instead buy everything new since otherwise they're depriving a poor kid of the chance to buy the same items.) and thousands who search amazon get the chance to buy slightly cheaper than they would have otherwise.
But a small benefit to a huge number of people feels worse than a slightly larger potential benefit to a handful.
A fair portion of the books being sold off probably wouldn't find any buyers and would end up pulped anyway.
Re:Lots of reasons... (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a book, "How to Make Money Selling Books", priced $2 at the used bookstore.
Scenario 1: ScumBag With PDA comes in, decides he can sell this book for $4.50 on Amazon, and pays the store the $2 it's asking. Then SBWP goes home and posts the book for sale on Amazon. The store's income: $2, paid to it buy a local patron.
Scenario 2: SomeBody Who's Penny-wise comes in, decides she wants to read this book, and pays the store the $2 it's asking. Then SBWP goes home and reads the book. The store's income: $2, paid to it by a local patron.
What is the difference between these scenarios? The store got the money that it was asking for. It has a right to sell its books to local buyers, of course, and it has done so in both cases. It has absolutely no right to put terms on what the buyer does with the book. ("Not for resale"?) Are you asserting that the second SBWP has some right to the book before the first?
Leaving aside the issue that PDA-guy may act rudely to other patrons as he roots through the books, why is what he's doing wrong? If you come into the bookstore, looking for "HtMMSB", after either of the SBWPs, the book is already sold.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:4, Interesting)
I have volunteered at my local library's booksale many times. We know that we can make more money selling online. Many of the books we have available for $1 we already know we could sell to Amazon for $10. We sell our books for $1 because we think people who can't (or even people who won't) buy books for $10 should still be able to own books.
The people who go through the library sales with scanners are basically equivalent to people going to a food-bank, getting food items, then selling them for profit.
Forthermore, they tend to be some of our rudest customers. They grab a book of a shelf, scan it, and move onto the next book, often sorting books into two piles, one pile for the books they want, another (larger) pile for the books they don't. They often do not pick back up the pile they do not want.
There are other booksellers who come in we mind less. They buy all the books for $1 each, and scan them at home, sell the expensive ones and return the ones they do not want to the library for a sale. Yes, they are still preventing others from getting the best of the books for a price, but they are quite willing to "donate" the cost of the books they do not buy.
Our library has had the no electronic devices sign up for three years now, and every year someone tries to sneak one in. They hide them in purses, pockets, anywhere they can. They do not care about other people's rules. They do not care when we explain to them what we are doing that people are able to get good books at low prices. All they care about is their own profits. They truly are scum.