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.
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Now if he was scanning them and making torrents, that would be shameless.
In fact, it would be fucking awsome.
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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!"
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, i
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Quite literally.
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The only aspect of this which bothers me is that sellers are restricted somewhat in terms of looking up the information as doing so could easily run afoul of anti
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Until we get a real-life example of a "completely free market", it's safe to assume that it's just a fairy tale for useless discussions, like whether or not there are street lights in heaven.
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That's a little disingenuous I think. Sure, a free market is an ideal that is not manifest in real-life practice, but that doesn't take away from its usefulness. We use such ideal constructs in our everyday lives, but we learn to correct for their impracticality through various means. In this case, we recognize that the practice of book scanning is a practical obstacle to the information-symmetric free market of book trading. So we correct for that by applying specific limits on that particular market.
It's
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.
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Exactly. And the business goes away the moment 1000 people start doing it because of oversupply.
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THE FREE MARKET IS EVIL, DOWN WITH THE CORPORATIST PIGS AND IN WITH OUR NEW ANTI-CORPORATIST OVERLORDS!!!!
The book seller is stealing from other would-be buyers and taking away all the good deals available locally. He owes them a portion, or all, of his profits.
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He's SAVING desired books from the shredder. The "heartless" nonsense is merely because he isn't personally collecting them to fap over.
SELLING them to people who want them is efficient recycling. Not a fucking thing wrong with that, it give more people a shot a them.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Nothing shameless (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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: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?
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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.
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It seems that we are separated by a common language. I deliberately split the issue into ease of access and price. Then you try to make the ease of access issue about price.
When you say "Unless they don't have the money" you are thinking of some specific hypothetical individual who wants the item but can't afford it. But given the market we are talking about items wanted by many people, some of whom can afford the higher price. For those people it is easier to access the item.
You argue that the larger marke
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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
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... 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.
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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
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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...
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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 fro
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.
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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 w
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.
Depends what you want... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:5, Insightful)
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, 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.
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I buy books from Amazon and from second-hand shops, but they serve different purposes. I look on Amazon for books that I want. I go into second-hand shops for ideas about books to read. Amazon serves the first purpose because it sells pretty much every book I might want. Second-hand shops serve the second purpose because they have a limited selection, so I can browse their entire range and often find something that I would not have seen online but which I might want to read.
If you remove all of the i
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What's interesting varies from person to person and place to place. And if a book that you might have found interesting is in an Oxfam store a thousand miles from where you live you would never have known about it, and so he's doing no harm to you by selling it onto somebody else.
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No shit, Sherlock. Point me to where I said he was.
Though there's no reason Oxfam couldn't offer such a service themselves.
On the internet someone a thousand miles away can become aware of it, buy it, and enjoy it. I guess it'd be better if it just stayed on a shelf, unsold, until it succumbs to bugs, fire or fungus.
Obviously the whole thing about the physical limitations of actual oldey-styley shopping
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He's a lumberjack and he's okay.
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".
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He could probably make a lot more money selling the tools and training to bookstores so that they can better price their books and better know which books don't sell at all. It's a good model.
Re:Depends what you want... (Score:5, Informative)
The only penny he's taking from someone's pocket is from his customer on Amazon.
The store was going to sell it for the price he paid, no loss to them. Could they have sold it for more? Sure. Were they going to? No.
If Slashdotters are so offended by this, they should create some free software that all the stores can use to figure out which books are worth selling on Amazon and help their local thrift store get up and running.
Let the used book stores get it running themselves.
Thrift stores aren't the same as used book stores or other for-profit resale stores. They're run by charities, both to sell things to the community at affordable prices and to make money to support their other programs.
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By your definition every merchant is a parasite.
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.
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Simple: He's raising the average price of all second hand books for everybody else.
(And he's not even interested in reading them, he just sees them as a profit).
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The bookstores are putting them up for sale at a price which they deem to make a fair profit for them. What's wrong with him buying them and selling them elsewhere if he believes that he can make a profit too?
Because the bookstore is part of a whole picture — book browsing, eccentric finds, local businesses, basically a whole ecosystem, and their pricing takes that into account. Same thing happens with sports tickets — the Red Sox benefit from having tickets priced so that their regular fans can actually go to games, just just the super-wealthy. The scalper can come and go and doesn't care about any of that. If whatever they're leeching from collapses, no problem, they can move on to suck blood from
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. :)
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A sale is not always a sale. Shops often discount a few items hoping that people purchasing them will find some other items they saw while shopping interesting too. Resellers like this guy defeat the purpose.
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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 p
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I have a friend who does this with not only books, but records and DVDs. Records he knows from decades in the industry, no scanner required. Books he generally buys in bulk, he simply scans the ISBN, gets a market price and re-sells. DVDs are interesting. He becomes friends with the managers of various dollar stores and buy them in bulk for a slightly lower cost. Some titles can bring in upwards of $20 a piece if its rare/sought after, otherwise most go for $5.
Why don't people just go to the store and buy t
Added value? (Score:2)
Because he's not really adding value, only a markup for selling in a different place. Whether that's of use to anyone (by making it available where it will be appreciated more) is debateable, and it may be of some worth, but I would say he is indeed more profiteering than adding value.
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).
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This book [amazon.co.uk]? The GBP 23.40 book, available at Amazon?
For such a rare book, it's surprisingly cheap.
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I'd assume he wants first edition, not a reissue.
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At the very least he is reducing the price of books, though in some cases he could be saving a book from sitting on the shelf for years till it is finally recycled. He is adding efficiency to the book market.
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:
Re:Lots of reasons... (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Unfortunately, the essence of the free market is a society where everyone thinks 'fuck you'.
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.
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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.
Or better yet, provide on demand a complete list of author/title/ISBN of books in the sale on the website. No more PDA campers, right?
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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
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PDA? Faugh. I'll use the laptop in my backpack and a CueCat!
Because they love books (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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I think library sales are different from thrift stores. The main point of thrift stores is to sell low-cost goods for the needy. Buying stuff there for resale does indeed harm the needy. The main point of library sales is not to provide low-cost books for the needy but to provide funds to support the library's operations, including the library's free book rental program which is traditionally its core.
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I mean, a library is all about being free for everyone. And to have someone come in and try to profit from their operations is distasteful.
Now if they did something like allow these schiesters to come in at the very end of the sale to go thru whatever is left over and didn't otherwise sell, I think I wou
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.
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.
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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 resel
Connecting buyers and sellers. (Score:5, Interesting)
So why don't the sellers do this? (Score:2)
Apart from anything else, they are in the ideal position to do this - since they could scan the books at their leisure before pitting them on sale. if I gave books to a charity shop, I'd like to feel that they were getting th
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The problem with that is, the local shop, probably can't fetch the prices Amazon sellers can, with a wider market....
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The problem with that is, the local shop, probably can't fetch the prices Amazon sellers can, with a wider market....
You have just declared yourself incompetent to make slashdot comments. You may now depart.
Hint: Anyone can be an Amazon seller. HTH, HAND.
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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 d
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Putting aside indolence and being "scared" of technology it seems to me that the charities and community outlets should be doing this. Don't they have some sort of implied responsibility to not waste (i.e. sell off too cheaply) any donations or communal property they own or are given?
I thought the idea of thrift stores was to dell stuff inexpensively so people with limited means could afford to get them?
Apart from anything else, they are in the ideal position to do this - since they could scan the books at their leisure before pitting them on sale. if I gave books to a charity shop, I'd like to feel that they were getting the most benefit from my gifts - and if that entails checking their value before slapping a generic $2 price tag on each one, so be it.
They have a hard enough time getting enough volunteers, and you want to add work to the process. And work that takes more training?
Waste of Time (Score:2)
Why does this guy even bother. If 1 in 30 he can make a markup on, how much can this guy be making? $20-50 per day, if he's lucky. He probably spends all day doing it and probably makes $5k per year if he's lucky.
a little irony? (Score:2)
Does anybody not see irony in this? Amazon originally started off as an online retailer/clearinghouse helping people purchase hard to find books through affiliated second hand book sellers.
Playing devil's advocate, is it really so bad though? initial "bottom feeder" reaction aside, the thrift store/used book seller makes a sale and presumably makes a little profit, scanner guy posts a listing, makes a sale and some profit, book buyer gets a book they're after. Scanner guy just becomes a middle man, the same
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).
Re:Why aren't the books doing this themselves? (Score:4, Funny)
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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.
Don't you mean that it's dying for all the right reasons? Used bookstores which buy rafts of crap just to build stock are the problem, and good riddance. If you only have books someone might want to buy then who cares if someone comes in with a PDA? Charge them what the book is worth and move on with your life. If you want to prevent it, put your stock on Amazon like everyone else. Nobody should be starting a bookstore without already sitting on a huge pile of books that other people want to buy. Nobody sho
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Don't you mean that it's dying for all the right reasons? Used bookstores which buy rafts of crap just to build stock are the problem, and good riddance.
The problem is it's not just them that will go, it's all used book sales. Instead we'll likely wind up with licenses and have to keep re-buying in multiple formats as the publishers milk us for every cent.
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 us
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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.
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.
Analyzing, analyzing, analyzing... (Score:2, Insightful)
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
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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.
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.
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.
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".
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That's actually the point. Any decent job is going to pay far more than what this guy gets being a trashpicker. Lots of tech-savvy folks are out of work right now though thanks to the economy. Hell, I did this for fun with a mail-order DVD place for a while (several years ago) - signing up for 8 DVDs for $9.99, buy two more at regular prices, cancel [rinse, repeat]. The place who was doing this had several out of print DVDs, and some high-dollar collections that could be flipped on eBay for a profit. I'd
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.
The reason that scanners are not welcome (Score:5, Informative)
I work for a company that is in the used book business. I meet with the people who run the local thrift stores, and the local friends-of-the-library sales. They are very open about why they don't welcome these people to their sales/stores.
The reason people with scanners are not welcome is because they are disruptive and rude to other patrons. Typically these people show up and are waiting when the doors open, they come in and lay claim to an entire section of shelves, or display table and begin sorting into piles by price-point. They stay for hours, and systematically move through the entire inventory. They take up a lot of space, prevent other customers from accessing the merchandise and leave a big mess behind for the staff to clean up.
The reason they don't scan the books and sell them online themselves is because they don't have the staff to do it. It is a great business as a sideline, easy to do, low overhead, moderate profitability. It is an enormous amount of work to do on a larger scale. Many of the chain thrift shops are expanding into online sales, but the smaller ones do not have the resources. Library sales are typically staffed by volunteers with one or two actual employees overseeing the process -they don't have the staff to do more.
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.
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"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.
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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