Use Me, Baby

Used books are big business.




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Like to Buy Books Online?

Here's a good list of independent bookstores in the U.S. Some good ideas for booksellers too. It'd be nice to have a Canadian version of this.



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There is.

www.abebooks.com

This is a Canadian-owned and -operated webiste, but it includes booksellers all over Canada, the U.S. and elsewhere. It also has a directory of participant booksellers. Very good.

Don't Know How We Missed This Before

The Toronto Star article on Abebooks.



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Abebooks is a great service to booksellers and book buyers alike. Looking for something rare or out of print? It's your best bet. I recommend it to anyone who likes buying books online, especially if you're fed up with Amazon's selection.

One thing I should point out, it's a used/rare/antiquarian service. All the books for sale are after market. If you're worried about royalties and such, you'll have to reconcile that with your conscience.

Thanks... I'm going to look into this service.

Who Can We Blame for the Bottom Line Approach to Publishing and Bookselling?

Consumer Reports, apparently.



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How He Did It

Michael Powell, of Powell Books, says it's all about how you talk yourself into it. "If you say, "I want to have a great neighborhood bookstore," I think you're starting off on the wrong foot. I think you ought to say, "I want to exercise my passion for books by having a very successful neighborhood business." I went into business by borrowing $3,000--some of the money came from Saul Bellow, who was teaching at Chicago. I spent $1,000 on a vacation and put $2,000 into an inventory of used books. We had 1,000 square feet. We built the shelves ourselves. I was able to quickly repay the $3,000. We kept increasing the inventory, expanding the space, taking on employees. At a lot of points I could have stopped and said this is my comfort level. But I liked to buy books too much. Then once I had the inventory, I had to figure out a way to market it."



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The Used Book as Cultural Archeology

We store things in our book jackets and forget about them. Then the books get passed on or sold. Ever come across some piece of another person's life tucked into a used book? Fascinating, isn't it.

At the Strand -- New York's oldest and biggest independent used-book seller -- the most gripping finds produce new enigmas. Adam Davis, a 25-year-old from Oregon, took a job as a Strand clerk when he came to New York three years ago to write fiction. One day, he opened a copy of Barbara Tuchman's medieval history, "A Distant Mirror," and discovered a birth certificate. The baby's father was listed as "not known." An attached rider, dated years later, named the father.

An old friend of mine (whom I've since lost touch with and would like to find - artist Chris Magee) used to have a guerrilla poetry group called "Perhaps, a Self-Centred Geisha" (hey, I was young). We used to do crazy things like mail unsigned poems to random people from the phone book or ask celebrities to write the last two lines of a sonnet of our composition, etc. One time we made 25,000 tiny poems on coloured slips of paper and in one weekend went around Toronto's bookstores slipping them into jacket covers of used and new books. There were so many left over we began slipping them into parking meter slots and under car windshield wipers. The idea was people would get these little bits of poetry sprung on them when they least expected it and might be more open to a new experience. In fact, that stunt, circa 1996 or so, is how I met rob mclennan. He tracked me down through an address on the back, if I remember, because he wrote about it in some Ottawa paper.



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Tired of knowing things?

Sell those pesky books and be done with intellectual engagement! Who needs all that thar learnin' when you can get cold hard cashola for your libarry.



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The used book new e-life

Great article on online used book selling.

The size and usefulness of the three main sites becomes apparent when comparison shopping. A search for a copy of Geoff Dyer's entertaining account of DH Lawrence, Out Of Sheer Rage, finds 120 copies available on Alibris. Its prices started at £1.60 for a used paperback from a bookseller in Massachusetts. That seller also had the book listed for the same price on Abebooks, but was undercut by a £1 offer from a UK-based book shop. Abebooks boasted 165 copies for sale, way ahead of Amazon.co.uk's 32 copies, while Amazon's lowest price was £1.05.

The comparison of Abebooks and Amazon is particularly useful.



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Hunting Lynn Cheney

God, that headline sounds divine, doesn't it? (I choose: the compound bow. You have a three minute head start. I suggest you use it wisely. Cue "Hungry Like the Wolf" on the old iPod...)



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Kerry gets it on with Lynn Cheney and her "Sisters"...

Aw yeah....Cue the saxophone, baby...



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Powell's: a modern day poacher?

Powell's stocks new and used books side by side and is a great alternative to big-box stores like B&N and Borders. That said, there are some problems. When you buy a used book, the author and the publisher see none of that money. We all know that. So buy my book new. Ahem. But what you might not know is that Powell's, with it's giant retail outlets, goes trawling in smaller cities, depleting them of their best stock, and thereby draining the potential sales of local used book shops. Further, they then turn around in the truck and head back to their HQ and sell the books in another town. Fair? Would it be if your store were left with only Dean Koontz novels?

The remaining independent booksellers are as important to Lane County's culture as Powell's is to Portland's. They can't compete with the big boxes or the superstores in terms of price. Their advantage is in knowing their customers, and knowing their community. They promote local authors, cater to and shape local tastes, respond to local customers' interests and specialize in local topics. They can create an atmosphere that could exist only in Lane County, rather than replicating an experience available at any mall in the country.

Won't somebody think of the children?



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Now airport buyers can add "used" books to their wide selection of "crappy" books

In an effort sure to screw someone, I'm not quite sure who, an airport bookstore chain is offering the following:

The program works like this: A customer walks into a Paradies store, such as the CNBC newsstand at the international airport in Milwaukee, and buys My Life by former President Bill Clinton for the full retail price of $35. The cashier staples the receipt to the dust jacket or attaches it with a piece of Scotch tape. The customer also gets a bookmark that lists the airports nationwide where Paradies does business. Providing the traveler holds on to that receipt, he can return My Life within six months (whatever its condition) and get $17.50 back. The retailer then resells the book -- unless it has sustained too much damage -- as a used book for $17.50.

Oh, wait, writers. Yeah, screw the writers.



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"In an effort to screw someone, somewhere.....My Life by former President Bill Clinton" is indeed a book!

Should authors get a cut of used book sales?

AS Byatt thinks so. And you know we should always listen to her.

Dame Antonia Byatt has called for new rules to protect novelists using a system known as droit de suite, which guarantees artists a payment for each subsequent sale of their work. The rule is already scheduled to be introduced for visual art next year to ensure that painters receive a payment for second-hand sales of their work.

I have to jump in here and say that the reason we continue to link to Amazon (even though their American arm donated primarily to the Bush campaign during the election) while most of the other lit bloggers have moved to Powell's, is because, as I understand it, Powell's will sell you the cheapest copy of a book by default. This means if there's a used copy of your book sitting beside a new copy online, the used copy gets sold first, and you, the author, get what the French call "Jacques Squatte".

That said, you must realize that I'm talking about a "you" who is likely a poet or midlist novelist (or worse still, a short fiction writer) and who could actually use the royalty injection. It seriously frosts my cheese to think of John Grisham and Dan Brown getting royalties on used books.

Also, Michael at the Lit Saloon (from whence I ganked this article) has a take which I largely agree with, but would add to. The real problem with adding royalties to used books is that it provides yet another barrier for getting books into the hands of people. Books are already too expensive and people are stopping reading in droves. Jacking up the price on used books is not going to help writers or publishing in general.



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"Jacking up the price on used books is not going to help writers or publishing in general."

Nor will it help the used book trade. In fact, it could all but kill it off.

I don't know what kind of fantasy land Byatt is living in where she thinks there is a direct correlation to the second-hand sale of a mass-produced book and the second-hand sale of a work of original art.

At the retail level, given the consignment system of orders and returns, it is difficult enough to tabulate accurate sales figures for books (for publishers at least -- all they know is what they've shipped out. They don't what's actually been purchased). I love those years when the returns from the year before outweigh the orders of the present year and my royalty statement ends up being in the red, not that Byatt has probably ever experienced this...

But for the love of Mike, how in hell does she believe that an accurate system of accounting for second-hand royalties could ever be designed, let alone implemented, let alone enforced. How should the 'used bookseller' (oh, that phrase could be read two ways) be expected to know the provenance of every individual copy of every book. How many of the books that end up in used bookstores were originally promotional copies that were never subject to royalty (depending on the contract) in the first place? Multiply that by the many thousands of different books in the shop, and now the poor bookseller is supposed to know who's alive, who's dead, who's using a pseudonym, who's estate is still active, who's copyright has gone into the public domain. . .

My advice for Dame Byatt, if she's serious about squeezing all the revenue she possibly can out of her books is for her to buy up all her backlist herself and sell it on line.

Or is that too ludicrous?

Edited by author 02-03-2005 04:48 PM
One must keep in mind that there are those of us that get together for book swaps, belong to Book Crossing, donate our used books to shelters, clinics and literacy programs, as well as finding other *subversive* ways to get books into the hands of people which would seriously fuck AS out of her royalties.

Love her to bits, but Dame Antonia's idea has legs like a chicken has teeth. Awa' wi' ye, foeul herrlot!

BUT the thing that caused me to come backstage and post was George's suggestion that people are quitting reading in "droves" because of the high price of books. Ehrm.... any evidence to back this claim up? Are we sure that other factors aren't more heavily at play in the Death Of Reading As We Know It, if such a phenomenon exists?

I myself read 1/10th of what I used to, but it's nothing to do with the cost of books (I use the library a lot, as well as buying as many books, new and used, as I can)... it's all to do with the amount of time I have, and I burn the candle not only at both ends but in the middle, too. Anecdotal evidence would suggest that others in my "demographic" (*ahem*) are in more or less the same boat: we're all having families, starting and running businesses, working on the side to support the aforementioned two vices, and answering up to a couple hundred emails a day, not to mention leaping onto the Internet when time allows and checking messageboards and book blogs...

If you've got the stats, George, let's see 'em! Otherwise, there are many, many more compelling arguments to throw at A.S. Inine's fool proposal.

Edited by author 02-03-2005 06:47 PM
Sorry, Lee, my argument was that in a time when people are quitting reading in droves [for many reasons], there is not reason to add further impediment. And price is definitely an impediment for me. It doesn't stop me from buying books, but it stops me from buying all the books I want.

G

DIY used books

A Harvard student creates an online textbook exchange. This is why some people get into Harvard. Every campus should have one.



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Factors inflating the price of books:
Those pesky author royalties. A massive increase in the price of paper over the past decade. Skyrocketing fuel costs leading to high shipping costs (in Canada, with its thinly spread population, this is a HUGE problem). An increase in the number of books being published, leading to smaller sales per title on average (smaller print runs mean higher unit costs). And the high-muckamuck champagne parties that publishers hold every evening.

OK, the first and last ones are non-negotiable, but the ones in the middle are rough on readers. Granted.

But I guess my real question (putting aside just how COMPLETELY PEA-BRAINED ol' A.S.B.'s suggestion is) is: are people reading significantly less? Are fewer books being sold? Is use of libraries declining? Is this, indeed, the end of civilization? (If so, less than when? Fewer than what? When did the slippery-slope-slide begin? Which demands the question: When was The Golden Age of Reading, statistically speaking?)
I'm not up on the latest reports, but I haven't heard my colleagues running around like little chickens screaming "The readership is falling! The readership is falling!" either.

All of that sounded more sarcastic and belligerent than I meant it (the scourge of the would-be funnyguy) but I'm just askin'. Is the readership falling?

Lee, you ask if readership is falling.

The question is, readership of what?

I sell a ton of cheap genre fiction, Dan Brown novels, and Harry Potter, and yes, I even sell a ton of glossy magazines that promise to reveal to millions of information-hungry women what the shape of their guy's butt reveals about his personality.

People are buying stuff to read, but are they reading it? I don't know. Maybe they are. Are they reading anything good? Not many of them, not many at all.

Edited by author 02-04-2005 08:25 AM
Ass-phrenology? [No, wait! Assiognamy!]

paul, i have to agree. people are buying a lot, but they are buying a lot of drivel. i sent a quick email survey to some of my friends and here's what they've purchased recently:

the paris hilton biography
a simpsons book
the south beach diet

yikes.

Edited by author 02-04-2005 06:12 PM
And all of this is a new development .... how, exactly? If you read the ancients, they have the same complaints: "The mass of men are philistines! Kids these days gots no respect for tradition!"

As a bookseller, you sell Dan Brown to subsidize Harold Rhenisch. That's the ancient game.

(and of course, there are those who don't play the game and therefore forfeit: the snobby independents -- god love 'em -- who ONLY stock lyah-trah-chah and who turn belly-up after a few bitter years in business; likewise there are the big chains who could give a rat's ass about lit and ONLY stock the crap... and eventually turn into Woolworth's.)

I always wondered how Harold Rhenisch got by - beacuse it's certainly not on his writing.

You said it, Yuck. Read Shakespeare, skip Free Will. Awful book.

/m29

buttology? ... i have to admit it, checking a man's butt seems like a good way to get a grip on his personality

Yes, all that remains is to reach between his legs...

... to gauge his personality?

i'm sorry, this is all just way too funny

"to get a grip on his personality"

A Man: You are well past saucy and border on stalker-without-a-face.

Ew.

I still think assiognamy rules.

G

I picked Rhenisch as an example of the kind of writer who languishes while Dan Brown, improbably, flourishes, though for the purposes of the example below you could name just about any writer - of any nationality - for whom the bandwagon is not bouncing merrily down the washboard track. It's the bandwagon that sells books and keeps bookstores afloat. So in reality it's pretty much impossible to be anything less than ambivalent about the bandwagon, innit?

To veer off-topic here, I feel bound to come to Rhenisch's defence. I have to admit, Free Will is not my favourite of his books. I do think he has written some remarkable - actually, more than that, some brilliant - poetry, which a Selected, if one ever appears, will reveal admirably.

But IMO it's his prose that is his strength. It's astonishingly good. I don't usually appeal to the "authorities," but Rhenisch's reputation as a writer is so far below what he deserves that in this case I will: John Moore in the Vancouver Sun called Out of the Interior "a kind of masterpiece ... In more than 200 pages of prose, there isn't a single cliche, trite image or shopworn phrase, or even a single sentence that doesn't bear the mark of long and careful thought." Reinhold Kramer, in Canadian Literature, wrote that Carnival was "brilliant ... often nothing less than astounding." John Metcalf has called Rhenisch "one of Canada's master prose stylists." (I could go on, but who wants to hear that?)

Out of the Interior, Tom Thomson's Shack, and Carnival are all marvellous books, each in its own way. It's too easy to ignore Rhenisch, for a number of reasons, and anonymous sniping, using different screen names to manufacture consensus (I can only assume that "Yick" and "Yuck" are the same person), doesn't put anyone in the best possible light, does it?

No, it doesn't. I absolutely agree!

Lee, your assumption that Yuck and I are the same person reeks of racial profiling; we're just too similarly-named people who share a dislike for the writing of Harold Rhenisch, heretical as that may seem to you. The only prose of Rhenisch's I've read are his intro to Free Will and some horribly garbled, self-indulgently clever book reviews (in which the book under review takes a backseat to HR's hamming it up), based on which I have a hard time imagining how he could possibly be one of our master prose stylists. And by "brilliant" are you talking Yeats-brilliant? Rilke-brilliant? Or Can-brilliant? Cubic zirconium is so often mistaken for more precious stones hereabouts.

>>"we're just too similarly-named people"

Too similarly named indeed.

I wouldn't say your dislike of Rhenisch is "heretical"; in fact, it's the orthodox stance. Take a look at Out of the Interior or Tom Thomson's Shack. You might be pleasantly surprised.

By "brilliant," I mean it knocked my socks off.

Silly me and my homophonic typos! I'm sure Yuck would never make such an egregious error. Honestly, don't you think if one person was trying to "manufacture consensus," she'd pick two completely different names?

What strikes me as off in Free Will is Rhenisch's apparent inability to condense his thoughts into necessary phrases and strong rhythms. Some of his ideas were interesting, but ideas aren't the make-or-break of verse composition. There were a few flashes in his poems, but for a poem to be great or "brilliant" in my view (stealing from Coleridge), the choice and order of words has to be indisputable (much else has to happen, but this is fundamental), and in all of the poems in Free Will there were great chunks I'd've cut out altogether and many other passages that were just plain clumsy and inarticulate in their rendering. I know you're not defending this particular book and sometimes very good writers produce very bad writing, but my introduction to HR hasn't exactly spurred me to seek out more. But if I happen across his prose works, I might give them a glance.

Edited by author 03-29-2005 10:04 AM
Indian found in cowboy book

Native American athlete Jim Thorpe, or, well, an old ticket stub referencing him, slides out of a Jesse James pulp. Time warp.

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Do used books cut into new-book sales?
A recent study says no. In my case it's hard enough finding the books I like new let alone used. Who knew erotica about copy editors would be so hard to find?

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Where's the best place to buy used books online?
Jessa Crispin of Bookslut fame does the research for you.

Three of the books that arrived did, in fact, match the conditions indicated on the site. One book had underlined text, something not mentioned in the description. (There is no place to report this at Abebooks—unlike Alibris and eBay, Abebooks does not include bookseller ratings.) But I could return the book, as part of the 30-day guarantee offered on all book purchases. But for $4, I figure, I got what I paid for.

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I'll miss the smell more than anything...

What if the future can only learn about the second-hand book store second-hand?


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I opened my bookshop seven years ago, straight out of university, as a break from my studies. Everyone told me that I would fail: friends and family actually in some cases took bets. The average wager was six months to a year. I have persevered by accepting less of a wage than I made while a student, though I have enjoyed almost every day at work.
 
But things have become much more difficult of late. Rents have increased; employee costs have increased; as has postage, phone and utilities. It all eats into the bottom line. But what may be the final nail in the proverbial coffin is the habits of my customers. Not the regulars, who come in weekly, bi-weekly or monthly, like clockwork, and who will be with me until my shop closes its doors (alas, possibly sooner than later.) But my irregular clientele, off the street: they no longer browse. They are not interested in taking half an hour and searching. They keep the engine running and pop their head in to see if I have the latest Oprah pick, or diet book, and when I say no they leave just as quickly again. They do not go from East of Eden to OF Mice and Men or Shining Bright; the next month they no longer seem aware that Steinbeck existed. They seem to want their tastes dictated to them, rather than slowly, and sometimes accidentally, discovering something for themselves.

In a 1000 square feet, I have 3 times the history, 5 times the philosophy, and perhaps 20 times the poetry of the local Chapters. I have no real desire to devote space to Dr. Phil. If I close the bricks and mortar shop and go on-line, I'll be able to make more real money, and work far less in doing so. (half my income comes from on-line sales as is, and I devote a small fraction of my work day to it.) I hate the thought of closing, though it may be necessary. I take no solace from the fact that a few in this town might miss me.

Don't buy new books
They depreciate as soon as you take them out of the store.

a landmark study released Wednesday confirms what publishers, authors and booksellers have believed -- and feared -- since the rise of the Internet: Used books have become a modern powerhouse, driven by high prices for new works and by the convenience of finding any title, new or old, without leaving your home.

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Edited by author 11-02-2005 10:55 AM
To browse: shifting meaning in shifty times

The second hand book browser, panty sniffer and all out geek is a dying breed, folks. Or at least a dying public breed. They can be found, by the stealthy geek-watcher, transfixed to the screen, clicker hand tensed.

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Is being online still a fad for you people, or is it that you just never grow tired talking shit. Gees, sorry, I thought this was a safe injection site.

Edited by author 11-10-2005 11:12 AM
Buying and selling used just got easier

Abebooks buys Bookfinder. Besides the obvious argument that there won't be anymore storefronts, no more eureka moments amongst the dusty shelves and charming chaos, I love Abe.

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Former bookseller for Alibris. Has anyone had past/present troubles with Alibris continuing to charge their credit card for monthly service fees once the seller relationship was dissolved?

Have you tried using SmartBookFinder.com? They are a great website for finding discount books. They are a book price search engine. They aggregate the prices from the major on-line bookstores for you and tell you where the lowest price is. I like that because it saves me a lot of time because I do not have to go each bookstore, I can just go to SmartBookFinder.com.