Encounter at a Library Book Store--Who's at Fault

[Dips]

A simple way to sell books, give the public a chance to buy and still give books a home would be have a staggered system.

Books which have recently gone for sale would have a limit on how many could be purchased per day. Perhaps 10 per day for books which have been on sale a week or less. If book dealers want to invest the time it takes to buy stock ten at a time, fine.

After a week the limit would be lifted and anybody, including book dealers, could swoop in and buy as many as they want.

But I wouldn't care much for book dealers coming in and acting as if they owned the place, as it sounds like these guys were doing. There's nothing wrong with banning picture taking in the stacks either.

I'd even take it a step further and ban cell phone use in the stacks. If a regular customer needs to call Aunt Millie and ask her if she wants a certain novel, that call can be made from the lobby. But if my boss wants me to list off 150 books so he can tell me which five to cherry-pick it's going to be harder to do that if I'm not in front of the books.

[wagegoth]

Camera is out of line, but I don't see the point in blocking these guys from buying books for resale.

Maybe they have a shop, maybe they sell online. The library could list the books on an online site and sell them that way, probably for more money. But that takes time and staff resources they might not have.

I've picked up used items a few times that I've ended up selling online. Not a huge profit, but it helps support my reading and collecting habit.

Dips has a good idea. A lot of clearance stores have a similar system. For 2 to 4 weeks it's the original price, and the date is printed on the ticket. Then every week or two, the price is dropped another 10% or so. You (I mean non-SCs) can figure out how much the price is or will be, then you can take the risk of leaving the item in the store for the price drop, or buy it when you find it. This way the staff doesn't have to keep going through the merchandise and remarking it every week.

My favorite local bookstore is 75% used and 25% new books. They accept used books for trade. If they don't want the book, they tell the customer that they are willing to donate it to the library for the book sale if the customer just doesn't want the book anymore. And they do it regularly. I think it works out well for everyone.

[dougiezerts]

The same thing is done in some used record stores I've been to in London. They'll start out with one price. If it doesn't get sold in a couple weeks, they lower it. A couple weeks more and they lower it again. I've gotten some great values that way!

[protege]

What do you think? It could be argued that they're not doing anything wrong. After all, this store is a not-for-profit operation, and if they want to buy stuff to resale that's their business.

They aren't doing anything wrong. Once the money is exchanged, they become the owner of the product...and can do whatever they want with it. The store's status as a "non-profit operation" has no bearing on that. How is this any different from the people who buy those $5 model kits (or other cheap crap) at Wal-Mart...and then list the item in their "store" on Ebay?

They were wrong about the camera though--quite a few places don't allow cameras. They can be used to 'case' a store for a future robbery/break-in.

I've picked up quite a few things at "thrift" stores over the years--boxes of Legos, model cars, furniture etc. Do I get hassled because I'm in some of them frequently--usually on the weekends? No, the employees don't care, they simply want to sell their crap, and I usually get a deal on it.

Last month while on vacation, I bought an old diecast (metal body, for those non-modeler types) VW Beetle model that someone was selling in an "antique" store. It was in pretty good shape, considering it was about 30 years old. Because it was somewhat dirty, and metallic brown, nobody seemed to want it, and it had been marked down to less than $20. Since the Bug is one of my favorite cars, I bought it, and a red one in slightly worse shape, for a grand total of $20. The store owner didn't care--he'd had "those damn cars" for months and was happy to be rid of them.

Once cleaned up, I had someone offer me $50 for the red one. I declined, not because I could "rip someone off," but simply because I don't sell my cars.

What I'm trying to say is, that it's all supply and demand. If I have something, and someone wants it badly enough, they'll pay whatever I'm asking. There's nothing "unethical" about that. It's simple economics.

[SongsOfDragons]

The only excuse I can think of to take pictures in a store is if you're either an art student or just like the patterns. I've asked for, and recieved, permission to photograph a whole tablefull of cups of tiny beads arranged in rainbow colour, and those big racks of expensive Jelly Beans. I keep the pictures cause they're pretty, and even so I had to show the bead piccy to the owner to make sure I wasn't stealing designs. I deliberately didn't get in any of the finished necklaces hanging on the wall because I knew she wouldn't like that, so she let me go on my way.

[Mark Healey]

I'm one of those resellers and there are some things people here need to know.

Books are what I know so I will limit myself to them.

Libraries get far more donations than they can reasonably handle, most of it crap.

They could shelve everything at used retail prices but they would quickly run out of space and wind up dumpstering most of what comes in once the space is filled.

They could shelve everything at used retail prices and throw out old stock as new comes in but then they would be throwing away good merchandise in less than a week (given the amount of space they have), including some specialty titles that can sit on a stores shelf for years before the right customer comes in.

If you go to enough library stores/sales you realize soon that the non-dealer shoppers (mostly grannies and brood mares) don't spend enough for it to be worth the effort.

At a good sale I will spend hundreds of dollars.

My advice to people who run the stores is to price them at used wholsale (1/6 current new price) for a week then mark them down to half that for a week then dumpster them.

Numerous times I've seen thrift stores get new management who decide to raise book prices to what they see in the used book stores. The books stop moving, the revenue falls and they eventually take the dealers's advice and start pricing them lower.

As to the guys mentioned in the previous post, they are amateurs. They are going to go home and look up the books on varioun internet sites, not knowing how to interperet the data intelligently, and come back to buy the ones they think they can sell at a profit. To their dismay they will find that the good ones have been bought by someone who knows what he is doing and the ones left won't sell at they price they think it will.