When it comes to buying and selling books I am something of
an expert, my family have run bookshops for a considerable time, I have a
bookshop which is trading at the moment I also publish local history books and
as a publisher I have about 150 books that are in print and available, both
directly to the public and to the book trade. I also sell books online via
Amazon, Ebay, ABE and from my own website.
Now I would guess that it is a fairly small proportion
of the population that regularly buys themselves books from a bookshop and an
even smaller proportion that regularly visits a secondhand bookshop. Apart from
the avid readers who always seem to have their heads in a book and the ardent
book collectors who are striving to acquire the most desirable editions of
books, there are also those few people who have an interest in something – be
it WW1 aviation, medieval, history, embroidery or the occult. If I visit someone
I always look at their books, that is the books not acquired by merely being
alive, the cookery, gardening, books bought for some course to further their
career, the bestseller picked up on the station or in the supermarket and the
inevitable presents, to see if they fall into the bracket of a person with an
interest.
Working all day in a predominantly secondhand bookshop it is
these people who I mostly encounter and so I find it easiest to get on with
them.
Anyway today I have been working on the art books in my
bookshop, my primary objective here being to make as sure as I can that they
will sell, in the days before the internet this would have involved mostly
checking the date code in them to see how long they had been in stock and
reducing the ones that had been on the shelf for a long time. These days
another factor is to try and make sure that the books are priced to compete
with the books for sale on the internet.
First impressions when looking at the secondhand books
available via Amazon would lead one to the impression that all books are
available secondhand priced at 1p, which when you add on the postage equates to
£2.81 however this is not exactly the case and in many cases it is not the
cheapest that books are available via Amazon for 1p.
Now in the last few months I noticed the sales of the books
I have listed on the internet declining, the only exception being the local
history books that I publish that I sell via my own website. Obviously I asked
the other booksellers I know that list online and they seem to be experiencing
the same decline.
I think part of the problem is that the whole process
of selling online is becoming much more automated and this is partly because
secondhand book prices have for the most part become much lower, so the whole
business of examining a book properly and listing it accurately becomes
uneconomic. So many of the secondhand books listed on Amazon, Ebay, et al,
don’t carry any description at all and many of the cheapest sellers have a poor
feedback score meaning I would be reluctant to buy from them.
This is a bit of a project a promise if you like – this post I mean
and I will endeavour to add to it later.
Ok a complex issue, the photographs in this post are of the
art books on the shelves and for sale in my bookshop today, if the books on the
shelves in your house looked like these I would be able to tell you were
interested in art. Whereas if you had a lot of art books that basically boiled
down to the big book of world arts, I would know you got a lot of Christmas presents
from someone you once told you liked art.
There is a sense in which some aspects of having a
collection art books has been replaced by having the internet, it has certainly
replaced the big book of world art.
As the first post here, I would just say that other posts either attract zero comments or repeat tedious and unpleasant comments from The Holyer Trio. They have destroyed this blog and I won't be visiting this blog again.
ReplyDeleteGood bye - sorry to see you go.
ReplyDeleteWhat a pleasure, 5:44, since you have never ever contributed to the thread of any debate but confine yourself to attacking others, you will not be missed. See you are now infesting ECR's blog with your rubbish though.
DeleteHolyer living down to form as usual and how on earth does Mystic Anon 8:12 know whether anyone has contributed or not. Their post is mere insult serving only to destroy debate. This blog certainly is becoming mere bickering and empty opinion.
DeleteI thought you were going, 12:25, so why take so long about it.
DeleteOh dear, the Manston Aquifer man is online. I'm off to sit in the sun.
ReplyDeleteA post of zero content or interest again Mr Holyer.
DeleteSo what is the content and interest of yours, 12:40. If you are going, old chap, please get on with it.
DeleteMichael this was really interesting, a thoughtful insight.
ReplyDeleteI think all retail has changed beyond recognition over the past 5 years or so as a result of internet.
I would not like to be struggling in retail I think.
Very interesting what you have said about price.
Now I try to get rid of books because I am a terrible hoarder but I have also moved house a lot, they are heavy to move & take up space and should I need the book or information within it it can be tracked down. Mr TP would look at my over loaded book shelves and roll his eyes at my claiming to get rid of them!
So the books I keep - well i have quite a few on sex - as you said good to have a hobby.
But I have far more on maths & science!
And quite a lot on toilet related matters - not plumbing /work books - but history of, sanitation around the world, etc that sort of thing.
I was always fascinated by all things toilet before I even met Mr TP. In fact I have a collection of toy toilets too.