This story at Slate is sad and funny and interesting: It’s about how the internet has turned used book buyers from a specialized kind of craftsman into automatons:

I make a living buying and selling used books. I browse the racks of thrift stores and library book sales using an electronic bar-code scanner. I push the button, a red laser hops about, and an LCD screen lights up with the resale values. It feels like being God in his own tiny recreational casino; my judgments are sure and simple, and I always win because I have foreknowledge of all bad bets. The software I use tells me the going price, on Amazon Marketplace, of the title I just scanned, along with the all-important sales rank, so I know the book’s prospects immediately. I turn a profit every time.

If you’ve ever been to one of those Friends of the Library sales, you’ve seen these people, scanning through books with a beeping handheld device, without even looking at the titles. If there’s a better physical representation of what the internet has done to bookselling, I sure can’t think of it.

5 replies on “Used Bookselling Sure Has Gotten Depressing”

  3. Yeah if you go to Goodwill when they just open, you’ll just see people piling books into bags, doing this same thing.

    I know a college professor in Virginia that essentially does the same thing with his iPad and looking up rare rugs in antiques stores for resale on eBay.

  4. I do this as a side-job, and there’s a huge ongoing debate among used media sellers as to use a scanner or not. I personally don’t use one; knowing the marketplace value of a title doesn’t mean it’ll sell. There’s all sorts of factors.

    I sell records, not books — the market is much better.

  5. Many valuable books don’t have bar codes. It’s a magical helper device that’s great for those who don’t know anything about books.

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