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Are you interested in making money selling books? Maybe lots of money? Maybe a living? If so, you've come to the right place, because my primary purpose as editor of the Bookologist is to help get you to where you want to be in this business.
There are those who contend that there's more than one way to succeed as a bookseller, and in one sense I agree. Some booksellers specialize in one area, some in another; some sell out of a store, some exclusively online; some list their inventory on fixed-priced sites, some on auction sites; and of course there's no end to different pricing levels and methods of presenting books for sale.
These differences, however, will not in themselves determine whether or not you succeed. What will matter above all else is, in one word, inventory. The quality of it. How much you spend to obtain it. How you present it for sale. No matter what else you do, you can't escape the necessity of finding good books at low prices; nor can you fail to present them in such a way as to resell them for much higher prices. This and only this is how to make money.
How much money would you be content with? $10 an hour? $20? $50? A quick examination of eBay auctions or Amazon Marketplace listings will show you that many, many booksellers settle for much less than this, but it doesn't have to be this way for you. Can you serve an apprenticeship of, say, six months, working hard at being the best seller you can be? Then $20 an hour is not only doable; it's likely. Two or three years out with the same commitment and you could double this or more.
You don't have to be a genius to get to these levels, but you will have to work hard and work smart. Part of working smart is getting your bookselling head straight. There are several stubbornly persistent myths that are especially troublesome for booksellers looking for inventory. The more stubbornly you hold onto them, the more difficult it will be to find the books you need to find.
Myth #1: All books have value to somebody. Most books - not some, not half, but well over 90% - aren't worth the paper they're printed on. This is important to know, because the next time you walk into a used bookstore, a thrift shop, an estate sale, or wherever you go to buy books, for every 100 or so books you look at, you might see one or two that have any value to you as a bookseller, and only then if you're lucky.
Myth #2: Books are sacred. Believe me, you can pick up a book, throw it in the garbage this very moment, willfully and with forethought putting it into intimate contact with eggshells and coffee grounds, and suffer absolutely no heavenly retributions for it. I promise. Even if you paid a dollar for it! If the sky is blue when you do this, it will stay blue; clouds will not pile darkly overhead; bolts of lightning will not strike you senseless. Yes, even if you're too busy or too tired to donate your worthless books to a library or thrift shop, you will not be charged with a bookselling sin.
Remember this: a book consists of a few handfuls of sawdust and a splash of ink-not quite nothing but very, very close to it. One of the worst things a bookseller can do, in my opinion, is allow inventory to accumulate on the basis that all books are special or too good to get rid of or will eventually find a buyer willing to pay your inflated price. I admit this may be true in another context. A book purchased at a yard sale for $.10 can change a life, but if you're going into the business of changing lives, you're in the wrong place. The purpose of this newsletter is to help you make money selling books, not to teach you how to save your fellow man. Consider Thoreau's wisdom: "I see ... townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools [and books!]; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in."
Myth #3: First editions are valuable. Just because a book is a first edition doesn't mean that it's worth a damn. Again, most books - not some, not half, but well over 90% - exist only as first editions because they weren't good enough to merit a second printing. If a book wasn't worth buying 50 or 100 years ago, chances are it's still not worth buying today.
Myth #4: Old books are valuable. Just because a book is old doesn't mean that it's worth a damn. Think about this: a hundred years ago how many people watched TV? Went to the movies? Listened to the radio? These hugely popular forms of entertainment didn't exist then. As a result, many people looked for entertainment in books, magazines, and newspapers. These publications were not only widely available but, more importantly, consisted substantially of a type of writing that read like a TV or radio show: light entertainment, boilerplate fiction, excessively topical news, opinion pieces, etc., the kinds of things that don't tend to hold their value over time. So, not only are many century-old books common, but many don't justify the time it would take to read them. Conclusion? Most of them are a tough sell, especially if they're fiction.
Myth #5: Scarce books are valuable. Just because a book is scarce doesn't mean that it's worth something. Here's the formula to remember: only a book that's both scarce and in demand has value. If it's only scarce - say, one of three remaining copies on the face of the earth - and consists of a dozen self-published poems by the worst poet ever to take pen in hand, it won't be worth anything to anybody unless that poet also scaled Mt. Everest in his bare feet and completed his epic "Ode to the Frozen Toe" on the summit.
Myth #6: Bestsellers, the books most in demand by the most people, are the books you should sell. Not on your life. Bestsellers are printed in huge numbers, and books in huge supply not only have no value but, in many cases, convert into negative value once they pass the front door into your home. In other words, you're better off to not even own them because they take up space in your house, not to mention your mind (see Thoreau above).
If you want to list your bestsellers on Amazon Marketplace for $.01 and attempt to make a living on what you might extract from the shipping allowance, be my guest, but you'd better like eating beans. The only good news is that you'll have lots of company to commiserate with.
Myth #7: If I only knew which books to buy, I could be a successful bookseller. I'll let you in on a secret: with scattered exceptions, nobody really knows which books to buy. True, the most successful, most experienced booksellers have some knowledge of books and apply it from time to time, but there are untold millions of books in existence, and who could carry around even a fraction of useful information about them in their head?
The majority of purchases made by most booksellers are done so on the basis of one thing: gut instinct. Fortunately, instinct can be refined with experience, sharpened into a breathtakingly effective tool. If your instincts are right only 10% of the time now, in time they could easily improve to 50% or more.
Of course, there are many more bookselling myths stalking our minds, new ones forming even as we speak, but these are the ones I hear over and over again, the ones that lead to countless book-buying mistakes. Hunt them down today, and you'll be glad you did.
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