Rare Book Monthly
Articles - February - 2010 Issue
Bookselling - It's a Business: Year and Decade in Review
Susan Halas (left) and Chris Volk.
The Race to the Bottom
While there were no consistent financial themes, dealers at all levels expressed dismay at a seemingly endless glut of cheap books flooding the market and what several termed "the race to the bottom." Incredibly low prices for common titles were universally seen as symptoms of too many books sold by too many people too recently arrived online and with too little knowledge of bookselling as a trade.
Gone were the heady days of the late 1990s when it seemed that all that was needed was to list a book and it would sell. The advent of Amazon with its extensive advertising and its willingness to absorb a financial loss for many years in order to create a brand name, dramatically expanded the market for used and out-of-print books.
However, the existence of this huge new pool of buyers did not go unnoticed. The past decade was notable not just for the entry into the market of many small sellers but even more so for the creation and expansion of high volume operations. These vendors used technology to process literally millions of books per year, either by selling them, often very cheaply; recycling them, or shipping them overseas in containers.
At first booksellers didn't believe those selling penny books could make it on the profit from shipping, but the mega-sellers still thrive and have been joined by the for-profit social enterprises such as Better World Books. In the spirit presumably of "if you can't beat them, join them," one ABAA member has even added the slogan "recycling millions of books since 1980" to his website.
BWB is the most successful and best known of social enterprises, but many other smaller similar firms attempted to replicate their success by claiming that a percentage of their profits are being given to charities in return for book donations. Both practices and the claims of these vendors have been a source of heated controversy among booksellers.
The Used Book Market
The "used" book trade is exponentially greater than the new book market - after all, it includes not just the books published in one year, but the books published over centuries. In the past, these vast numbers of books were filtered by rare and used book dealers and only those which met certain standards of condition, content, literary value and scarcity were considered worth selling by mail order - or worth shelf space in a retail store.
By 2009 it seemed that these standards had been tossed out, and replaced by two simple criteria: What is the lowest selling price and sales rank on Amazon. Yet, the comments of those booksellers who reported success in 2009 also reflects the importance of knowing your inventory and what has genuine lasting value. The most frequent response to "What did you do differently in 2009?" was an emphasis on "selecting better inventory." One highly specialized seller said "it's all about the inventory" as he reported an increase in his average sales price from $1500 to a shade under $1700. Others cited the importance of adding pictures to their inventory listings.
Diversification and Specialization
Practically every dealer has a primary niche, or area of expertise be it trusty standbys such as modern firsts, scholarly nonfiction, voyages and travels, or genres like science fiction, mysteries, children's and illustrated books. Additionally many dealers handled other kinds of old paper such as photos, maps, prints, drawings, manuscripts, autographs and ephemera.
Some of the higher end dealers offered very specialized services such as appraisals acceptable to the IRS for valuation purposes, informal estimates of value, and help with developing or selling an entire collection. Others for a nominal fee gave advice to institutions like libraries and museums on the worth of their duplicates and helped with finding appropriate homes for donated items of value. One bookseller did well with a "books only" by-subscription listserv www.bibliophilegroup.com. Still another found a niche in vending magical erasers and helpful information on book repair www.sicpress.com.
The most frequently stated goal of those who survived 2009 was to generate an expanded client base, increase repeat business and multiple sales. The cultivation, care, feeding and breeding of the customer - be they casual reader, scholar, collector, or institution has never been more important.
Pessimists
Those with the gloomiest views felt like one long established seller, "We are the end of books as we know them." The indicators of the demise of traditional publishing and print media were everywhere, heralded by tech changes such as Amazon's Kindle, and other e-readers. Google iced the cake with free online publication of thousands of many long out of print titles.
