I met a guy at a thrift store yesterday who was buying up a lot of books. He seemed to know exactly what he was looking for and spent little time looking at each book other than to read the title.

I struck up a conversation and it turns out he makes his living selling books on line - books he gets from thrift stores, junk shops and library sales. He's quit his regular job and now has enough time and money that he's been haunting the thrift stores of Europe for bargains (he says the pickings are slim but there are tax advantages).

He told me that sales are seasonal - fiction sells in the summer, non-fiction in the winter. He sells a lot of textbooks in the fall. He does well with the "Dummies" series of books, and while books by political commentators (Hannity, Beck, Coulter) sell briskly, he no longer handles them because the market is flooded. It seems no one hangs on to these books once they read them and judging by the selection in the thrift store he is correct. There were lots of those books on the shelves, arranged in groups of 3's and 4's.

It looks like there are a lot of people who do this sort of thing and now I know what "Fulfillment by Amazon" means.

Flesh and Blood Robots for Amazon

I know people who do it with clothing and jewelry. They buy at thrift stores and sell on their Etsy.

My sister did it for a while, starting off selling some of her own collection and eventually augmenting it with bags of books purchased at the friends of the library book sale (there’s a rather large one in Gainesville that I’m sure Mary Anna has been to).

I think by the time you account for labor she didn’t do well with it, but she probably wasn’t as systematic as this guy.

This is analogous to what bookscouts used to do, before Amazon. And maybe still do. They look for first editions, signed copies, things like that, that are worth money to collectors.

quote:

Originally posted by jon-nyc:
My sister did it for a while, starting off selling some of her own collection and eventually augmenting it with bags of books purchased at the friends of the library book sale (there’s a rather large one in Gainesville that I’m sure Mary Anna has been to).

Yeah, the FOL sale was a big event in Gainesville. I couldn't let myself go every year, or I'd own a million books.