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The demise of the second-hand bookshop

thecritic.co.uk

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Re: The demise of the second-hand bookshop

#31

Post by davidro »

contingencies wrote: post #15
sbuccini wrote: post #6

The big second-hand bookseller in my town has a huge collection and several locations in multiple metro areas. Yet they have no way to search for a specific title! I was shocked. If you have no idea of your current inventory and sales history, how do you know how much to pay for people's books? Their books are about $0.50 a title -- I would gladly pay that price for a book I would otherwise get from the library if I…

All books in the last ~50 years have a barcode already printed on them, and an ISBN printed inside. Any phone camera can read these. If you assume 15 seconds per book at pace, 40 books per shelf, 6 shelves per bookcase, and 30 bookcases in the average store, complete digitization of a collection should take only ... Edit: Responding comment is quite right, original calculation mistaken. It's 4AM here. 40 × 6 × 30 = 7…

When we do inventory of books, about 7000 of them, it takes a team of 3 or 4 people scanning labels on the back of books, about 5 hours to scan them all. Add 3 or 4 more people in to watch the computer(s) for errors as scans come in. Then add an hour or two to pur things back to normal.

For a used bookstore with no pre made labels and books stacked and crammed I’d double the time. Then add some more for books that don’t have a barcode on them...

This is with laser barcode scanners and dedicated machines per device. Phone scanners are much slower.. either way, give me a crew of people, scanners, etc and we could scan about 10K books a day.

Re: The demise of the second-hand bookshop

#32

Post by davidro »

davidro wrote: post #31
contingencies wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All books in the last ~50 years have a barcode already printed on them, and an ISBN printed inside. Any phone camera can read these. If you assume 15 seconds per book at pace, 40 books per shelf, 6 shelves per bookcase, and 30 bookcases in the average store, complete digitization of a collection should take only ... Edit: Responding comment is quite right, original calculation mistaken. It's 4AM here. 40 × 6 × 30 = 7…

When we do inventory of books, about 7000 of them, it takes a team of 3 or 4 people scanning labels on the back of books, about 5 hours to scan them all. Add 3 or 4 more people in to watch the computer(s) for errors as scans come in. Then add an hour or two to pur things back to normal. For a used bookstore with no pre made labels and books stacked and crammed I’d double the time. Then add some more for books that do…

For a used bookstore inventory could be done once a year like we do to avoid drift in our data.. but more realistically everything would be scanned as it comes in and out. Why that doesn’t already happen baffles me too!

Re: The demise of the second-hand bookshop

#33

Post by SubiculumCode »

In my small town, we have a game store that sales used sci-fi books, a tiny used books store with a small selection, and two thrift stores with decent selection of books. Nevertheless, I do not feel any of these constitute a real used-book store with any real breadth or depth. I'd love to visit one.

Re: The demise of the second-hand bookshop

#34

Post by SubiculumCode »

pasabagi wrote: post #5

From personal experience, what has made me rarely go to second-hand bookshops (or bookshops of any kind) is they typically have a really bad selection. The amount of trash printed is insane, and not only do people tend to keep the gems, but they also tend to suck them out of second hand bookshops, so only really useless books are left.

The problem with used books stores is they always have book two of a series, but never book one :)

Re: The demise of the second-hand bookshop

#35

Post by SECProto »

contingencies wrote: post #15
sbuccini wrote: post #6

The big second-hand bookseller in my town has a huge collection and several locations in multiple metro areas. Yet they have no way to search for a specific title! I was shocked. If you have no idea of your current inventory and sales history, how do you know how much to pay for people's books? Their books are about $0.50 a title -- I would gladly pay that price for a book I would otherwise get from the library if I…

All books in the last ~50 years have a barcode already printed on them, and an ISBN printed inside. Any phone camera can read these. If you assume 15 seconds per book at pace, 40 books per shelf, 6 shelves per bookcase, and 30 bookcases in the average store, complete digitization of a collection should take only ... Edit: Responding comment is quite right, original calculation mistaken. It's 4AM here. 40 × 6 × 30 = 7…

> If you assume 15 seconds per book at pace, 40 books per shelf, 6 shelves per bookcase, and 30 bookcases in the average store,

Everyone else commenting on the math, but I take issue with the starting assumptions. A bookshelf fits approximately 10 books per foot. A used bookstore, in my experience, tends to have a huge amount of books - shelves to the ceiling (8 shelves high, 5 feet wide). Taking as an example some used bookstores near me, I would estimate a used book store at minimum would have 100 such shelves. 8x5x10=400 books per shelf, x100 = 40000 books. Using your scan time estimate, that gives us 40000x0.25min = 10000 minutes, or 166 hours to scan the isbn (21 days)

Re: The demise of the second-hand bookshop

#36

Post by smoe »

mistrial9 wrote: post #21

Used bookstores are a lot like gardens -- they must be tended daily and grown in 100 ways, year after year. The city I grew up in was legendary for used bookstores, and they sit all but empty now, decades later. The 'modern' people chiming in about how to "search faster" are missing an aspect of the experience that is literal and measureable, as well as partially undefineable simply because the portion of the mind an…

For me, the most magical thing about the small local bookstores is the people working there.

Just getting into one, chatting with people genuinely and deeply passionate about what it is that they are selling. Having a coffee, talking about a book I read, what aspects I liked, philosophizing about the topic in general and getting recommendations what to read next based on that has beaten at least 10x any 'modern' and automatized approach I have ever seen.

But I think that is a situation where a lot of small shops, whether they sell books, music instruments, clothes, food, etc. are in. If they grow too big, the immense value of personal advice and interaction gets lost and if they are too small the people might not be able to make a living.

Re: The demise of the second-hand bookshop

#37

Post by bjo590 »

billjings wrote: post #29
bjo590 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Assuming ~600 man hours (your numbers) to digitize an entire used book store, at $15/hr cost for labor it would cost ~$900 to digitize a bookstore. I think you're shy a factor of 3 or 4 on the amount of labor it would take to digitize a book store, given my experience with running inventory at retail shops. Maybe it could be worth it if there was an inventory management system that could automatically post the books…

"Ultimately all physical retails spaces have the same common problem -- why should someone go into your store when they can get the same products online. ...I personally think there are two answer, one is to move the core retail business online, and the other is to create experiences people will keep coming back for." This is a great observation. I think that every business looking at option 1 would run away in terro…

> This is a great observation. I think that every business looking at option 1 would run away in terror, as that would mean competing directly with Amazon.

I don't think pivoting online is a suicidal move for many business, but it takes a different type of mindset to make it work. I'd like to highlight heatonist.com as an example of someone doing it right. It's a NYC based hot sauce boutique with a web presence. They create quality web content and use it as advertising (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAzrgbu8gEMIIK3r4Se1d...). Their inventory is a curated list of high quality products. Their web reviews are all from people in the same tribe of hot sauce fans. Their website and shipping practices are all _good enough_.

Re: The demise of the second-hand bookshop

#38

Post by romanoderoma »

bjo590 wrote: post #22
contingencies wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All books in the last ~50 years have a barcode already printed on them, and an ISBN printed inside. Any phone camera can read these. If you assume 15 seconds per book at pace, 40 books per shelf, 6 shelves per bookcase, and 30 bookcases in the average store, complete digitization of a collection should take only ... Edit: Responding comment is quite right, original calculation mistaken. It's 4AM here. 40 × 6 × 30 = 7…

Assuming ~600 man hours (your numbers) to digitize an entire used book store, at $15/hr cost for labor it would cost ~$900 to digitize a bookstore. I think you're shy a factor of 3 or 4 on the amount of labor it would take to digitize a book store, given my experience with running inventory at retail shops. Maybe it could be worth it if there was an inventory management system that could automatically post the books…

> one is to move the core retail business online, and the other is to create experiences people will keep coming back for.

Agree

I think that's the reason why IKEA stores are so popular

You get the full experience of living in a house and can have a feeling of the different setups

The furniture per sé are not great, but the experience is way more satisfying than the average furniture store, at least in Italy

Re: The demise of the second-hand bookshop

#39

Post by ninjinxo »

bjo590 wrote: post #26
ninjinxo wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You may want to run those numbers again, you're shy a factor of ten. Edit: the parent comment's calcs are wrong too

I won't run the numbers again, because I think the meat of my comment is in paragraph 2 and 3.

I take issue with those sections too; you completely ignored that often customers won't know exactly what they want, importance of browsing, and the expert service provided that is the salesperson giving book suggestions and advice to customers.

Your points about alternative revenue streams by providing alternative services are directly covered in 20 year old tv show (black books) where a 'dysfunctional' bookstore either has them already implemented or trials them. For example, coffee is about keeping the customers in the store and browsing, people leave if they get hungry or thirsty. If you're actually deriving substantial profit from your hot drinks, then you're running a niche cafe, and you're in competition against legitimate baristas with fancier machines. It also takes up a large amount of space, and can cause volume issues otherwise.

Most secondhand bookstores are small, and items have a large volume-time footprint i.e. the turnover of any individual item is low. Get rid of all the low margin books for dining, and you ruin the browsing experience in multiple ways. You're just suggesting the secondhand bookstore should ditch it's secondhand books, and instead sell only high turnover popular stuff i.e. compete with modern normal bookstores, which are already doing beyond what you've suggested.

Re: The demise of the second-hand bookshop

#40

Post by m4rtink »

Yet the japanese second hand book/game/CD/DVD/hadware company Book Off is as successfull as ever, with stores pretty much everywhere in Japan and starting to expand overseas: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Book_Off

Its really an amazing rxperience there - clean orderly stores with bright illumination jam packed by books at lidiculously low prices & you can find total gems there if you look for a while - like the first artbook of Masamune Shirow in perfect state for abou 1500 yen (~13$ ?)! I dont even want to think how much that would have cost on Ebay...

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