We were out checking thrift stores for costume parts this afternoon, and I took the opportunity to sift their books. Goodwill had, as expected, nothing but overpriced garbage- their stuff gets picked over by the scanner crowd at the distribution center before it ever sees the store proper. Mission Thrift had some goofy pricing of their own, demanding silly amounts for anything published in the last two years, but going with the traditional one dollar hardcover and .50 paperbacks on the older stuff.
It was still picked over- there was an internet guy I see at library sales nosing around when I got there. But I found a bag full anyway, one advantage of having a store to fill instead of ignoring everything that doesn't seem like Amazon fodder. Plus I found a few likely internet books.
How did the locust swarm of scanner borg miss these obvious books?
No bar codes.
To generalize, scanner people don't know anything about books. If a book doesn't have a bar code for their reader to scan, they're clueless. Having worked in an actual store for years I can tell a good book by sight. I may not know price specifics, but I can tell if it's something interesting and out of the ordinary and those are the kinds of things that usually sell for a decent price.
Today's winners were a survey of soils in the county (listed at $75) and a book on a specific tribe of Nevada Indians ($20), both undercutting the competition by a substantial margin so they should sell sooner rather than later. That'll cover our monthly trip to Costco- not bad for a buck fifty investment.
No comments:
Post a Comment