Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman • Hacker News Board

Re: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

#91

Post by lsc » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 6:12 PM UTC

jcl wrote: post #90

epochwolf wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The database is stored locally on his pda so there are limits to just how slow it will get.

I was wondering about that while reading the article... Does he really have a complete Amazon book price database on his PDA? If so, how does he keep it up-to-date? I imagine Amazon would object to someone constantly scraping their prices.

the amazon XML api is really nice - it was my primary tool when I was working in that space north of five years ago.

I don't know what this guy did, but what I did (and this would become more useful if I had more clients than just me) was that I cached the data for a certain period of time... so the first time I asked for it within a certain time period it'd actually ask, the second or third time it'd hit a cache.

Now, if I was making software for other people to do this, and I had a bunch of guys like this one using my software to search for books, assuming it went through my db before amazon's, you'd build up a pretty large cache.

Of course, if you could somehow arrange for the whole damn thing to be available offline, that'd be even better, but I don't know how amazon would feel about it. When I was doing it, there were rate-limiting things preventing me; but if you are bigger, there's really no reason for amazon to not give you the data if you are willing to pay for it or what have you; this product is ultimately helpful to amazon.com as a merchant.

Re: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

#92

Post by lsc » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 6:25 PM UTC

orenmazor wrote: post #83

lsc wrote: post #25

many years ago, back when I was sawed-off software (arguably a much cooler name than prgmr.com) while the software for all this was still being built, my goal was to create software for these people. I failed, but it was an amusing story. I though "well, first I need to sell some books, so I know what it's actually like" I'd hit craigslist for anyone wanting to move more than 500 books for under $0.10 per. At my peak…

I not only enjoyed your post, but laughed when you said you were obsessed with pre-isbn scanning. I can instantly guarantee that would be a mistake I would make as well.

the thing of it is that it'd be a whole lot easier now, with modern smartphones having a decent amount of cpu and good cameras.

It'd still be really difficult to do the true "pre ISBN" books just 'cause those are difficult to identify even with human help. often the printing/publisher/ etc... info isn't on the amazon page, and that sort of thing is huge when it comes to values.

But for the post ISBN (or the SBN? what was that called? the american book number, before it was International?) things would be much easier; yeah, you've gotta ocr a string, but with today's smartphones, that'd be pretty easy. then you just come up with a list of editions or what have you. You'd still have the problem of amazon's info about old books being not great, but you'd at least duck the problem of getting a different book with the same title (which is more common than you think.)

Really, if I were to enter that market now, I'd definitely focus on the pre-barcode books, just 'cause as far as I can tell, the software for dealing with barcodes is pretty good, and I think modern smartphones are now powerful enough to do the OCR and other stuff required to deal with that sort of thing.

Re: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

#93

Post by loupgarou21 » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 7:34 PM UTC

tjr wrote: post #18

Semi-related: a few days ago I took two boxes of old computer and math books to a local Half-Price Book store. They don't usually offer a whole lot of money for such things, and I had been thinking of donating the books to the public library, but the library didn't seem interested in what I had. I figured I might as well get a few dollars rather than just throw them out. As expected, after about ten minutes of sortin…

My wife brings stuff to Half-Price Books periodically, usually getting close to nothing. One time I decided to help her out as we had a lot of old DVDs and CDs we didn't actually use. My wife was extremely excited when they gave us over $80 for everything. I asked about why it was for so much, and apparently a couple of the CDs I had brought in were extremely rare and quite sought after. The only one that I remember was a demo CD with only four songs on it, but apparently it was worth a lot to someone.

Re: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

#94

Post by SHOwnsYou » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 8:01 PM UTC

dedward wrote: post #80

gjm11 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people are upset he's making a profit. Is that really what "some people" are upset about? That's not the impression I get either from the article or from comments here. Some people are upset that he, and others like him, are making it harder or less pleasant for them to buy used books. Some people are (something rather less than) upset because what he's doing displeases them aesthetically -- books are meant to…

I find it highly unlikely, given the sheer number of books printed nowadays, that we'd end up anywhere near scenario number 2. Merchants could seize the opportunity here - if your store is full of resellers rather than the public, it's time to up YOUR game and start charging more for your used books.

Nice idea, but ultimately it is impossible to know if the customers in your store are resellers or people buying for consumption.

The way to prevent resellers from picking through your inventory for arbitrage is to correctly price your books from the start. With accurate pricing you can still undercut resellers and not make each book a commodity -- Resellers incur a multitude of costs: time, shipping, 15% amazon fee, etc. If you raise your prices to resaleValueOfBook - resellerCharges + $0.01, you cut out the combing by resellers and still offer a sizable discount from Amazon.com

Re: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

#95

Post by burnout1540 » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 8:08 PM UTC

I have some confessions to make too. I did what this guy did but in a much more automated, scalable fashion. I did online book marketplace arbitrage.

Basically, I wrote software to automatically find books for sale on one used book site on the web and listed the same book for sale (with a markup) on another site. If my listing was purchased, my software would automatically purchase the book from the original seller and have it shipped directly to my buyer.

In the second half of 2007 I did over $200K in sales and had 10s of thousands of books listed for sale at a time. If anyone has any interest, I might write a blog post about it.

Re: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

#96

Post by maxawaytoolong » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 8:09 PM UTC

burnout1540 wrote: post #95

I have some confessions to make too. I did what this guy did but in a much more automated, scalable fashion. I did online book marketplace arbitrage. Basically, I wrote software to automatically find books for sale on one used book site on the web and listed the same book for sale (with a markup) on another site. If my listing was purchased, my software would automatically purchase the book from the original seller a…

Out of $200K in sales, what was your take home?

Re: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

#97

Post by burnout1540 » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 8:26 PM UTC

maxawaytoolong wrote: post #96

burnout1540 wrote: post #95

I have some confessions to make too. I did what this guy did but in a much more automated, scalable fashion. I did online book marketplace arbitrage. Basically, I wrote software to automatically find books for sale on one used book site on the web and listed the same book for sale (with a markup) on another site. If my listing was purchased, my software would automatically purchase the book from the original seller a…

Out of $200K in sales, what was your take home?

About $50K. It was still ramping up at the time though and I am aware of people doing the same thing who, I believe, are easily making $1M+.

Re: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

#98

Post by bapadna » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 8:45 PM UTC

lionhearted wrote: post #46

I respect this guy a lot. There's been enough times I wanted to get an obscure out of print book and I can only find copies that cost $60 or even $200+. Taking a book off the shelf, paying the used bookseller and freeing up their cash/space, and stocking the inventory in his home for the whole world to be able to buy the book online - man, the guy's almost a saint in my book. Some people are upset he's making a profi…

He deals in non-obscure books with known pricing and demand. Your hard to find, obscure book won't be on his shelf. And on the off-chance it is, he's pricing based on other vendor prices, so it won't be cheaper.

So... consider him a saint all you'd like, but he is not helping you in the way you imagine he is.

All he's doing is going to thrift shops, and ensuring that poor people don't get any of the popular books at below market prices. Nothing saintly about that, IMO.

Re: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

#99

Post by bapadna » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 8:47 PM UTC

edfrtghjkjh wrote: post #10

hugh3 wrote: post #2

He never explains why he feels bad about it. It seems like a perfectly respectable profession to me, bringing books from ignored corners of dank bookstores to the hands of those who really want them.

It's actually of benefit - there is a book out there that I want but it's hidden in a library or garage sale in a city 1000mi away. This guy makes it available for me to buy at a price I set on Amazon - rather than the book ending up in the trash and me not having what I want.

This guy doesn't deal in those books. He deals in books with known prices and enough volume that he can be reasonably sure it'll sell in a moderate amount of time.

If nobody else has it on amazon, this guy isn't buying it and putting it up there.

Your stated benefit doesn't exist.

Re: Confessions of a Used-Book Salesman

#100

Post by CWuestefeld » Thu, Oct 07, 2010, 8:58 PM UTC

jholman wrote: post #56

tkeller wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There's nothing dishonorable about arbitrage.

I agree that there's nothing necessarily dishonourable about arbitrage, and I agree that based on his story, this man is doing honourable work. However, I think that there is a potential problem in some arbitrage. Arbitrage depends on information asymmetry, and I think that labouring to perpetuate information asymmetry is unethical. (I would say that failing to eliminate the asymmetry when you could easily do so is a…

This example, at least, does not depend on asymmetry of information. It depends on the willingness of the parties to invest extra labor.

The business model of the thrift store requires treating the books as commodities ("all hardcovers $2/ea", etc.), as they don't have the volume to invest time in research. The business model of the used book seller requires knowledge, amortizing the cost of researching each book over a global (or at least national) customer base.

Adam Smith would find this a wonderful example of division of labor.