Options for Basement Booksellers

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May 29, 2007 | 4 2 min read

Last week, online used book retailer Alibris announced a new program called Alibris Basic targeting “small and moderate booksellers,” i.e. non-professionals. The program appears to differ from Alibris’ main offering in terms of pricing:

You can list up to 1,000 items for sale, and you only pay $1 plus a small commission for each one that you sell. If you don’t sell anything, you don’t pay anything except the annual subscription charge of $19.99.

This compares to the flat monthly fee (plus commissions) that larger scale booksellers are required to pay. For folks who have a lot of collectible books, the Alibris program is probably worth checking out, as the site specializes in this sort of inventory. As much as Alibris would like people to list all of their books for sale, however, there are better options for readers who are looking to unload their old non-collectible books.

Amazon lets you very easily list your books for sale in just a couple of steps through their “Sell Your Stuff” page. Amazon charges 99 cents plus a 15% commission on the books you sell. The main upside of going with Amazon, as I see it, is that it probably has the widest reach of all the bookselling programs out there.

Still, creating and managing listings for dozens of different books can be time consuming, and one must also deal with shipping off books that get sold to various individual buyers. If this sounds like a pain, then Barnes & Noble’s book buying program might be a better bet. You need only enter the book’s ISBN to get started. B&N will tell you if it’s buying that title and how much it’ll pay. After you’ve entered your books into the system, you print out an invoice and shipping label that allows you to send the books off to B&N for free. A few weeks later you get a check in the mail. I’ve tried B&N’s program, and I found it remarkably simple. You may not be getting the best price for your books, but it’s a lot easier than the other options. The main drawback I found is that B&N is somewhat limited in the books it is willing to buy. Textbooks are the best bet, and it’s a good way to try to unload any older ones you might have lying around.

Beyond the above programs, there’s always eBay, which in the realm of non-collectible books is more trouble than it’s worth (though I have had luck putting up a few dozen books at once, charging $1 a piece to start, and cross-promoting across all my other listings as a “$1 book sale.”) And then there’s the local used book shop. Buying policies at these stores vary greatly, but some pay well – and often much better if you’re willing to get paid in store credit. Of course, these “trade in” policies are how many of us ended up with such big collections of books in the first place.

Feel free to share any basement bookselling tips in the comments.

created The Millions and is its publisher. He and his family live in New Jersey.

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The F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest

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April 3, 2005

Millions contributor Rodger Jacobs is continuing his efforts to get a street in Los Angeles named after F. Scott Fitzgerald. Now, he’s put together a short story competition to further commemorate the author. Here’s the release:The film production and web publishing company responsible for the petition drive to name the intersection of Sunset Boulevard and Hayworth Avenue in honor of the late F. Scott Fitzgerald has announced a short fiction competition to further commemorate the author on the sixty-fifth anniversary of his passing. At the time of his demise on December 21, 1940, the celebrated author of The Great Gatsby and Tender is the Night was living at 1443 North Hayworth Avenue in the home of gossip columnist Sheilah Graham. Rodger Jacobs, President of 8763 Wonderland Ltd., is requesting works of original fiction of no more than four hundred words on the subject of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s last days in Hollywood. “The stories can deal with Scott directly or indirectly,” says Jacobs, “just as long as they somehow address F. Scott Fitzgerald in Hollywood.” Entries will be judged on originality and overall style. Prizes will be announced “sometime in the near future.” The deadline for short fiction entries is August 1, 2005. Entries may be e-mailed to [email protected] There is no fee for entrants, though Pay Pal donations are suggested to help defray costs involved in mounting the continuing petition drive. The F. Scott Fitzgerald Memorial Petition can be viewed and electronically signed here.

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New Books: Clare Allan, Scott Anderson, Guillermo Arriaga, Peter Carey

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May 1, 2006 | 1 2 min read

A debut novel called Poppy Shakespeare is getting rave reviews in England. The book, by Claire Allan, follows the narrator “N” and the eponymous Poppy at the Dorothy Fish, a mental institution, among 25 residents, one for each letter of the alphabet, “the ‘X’ chair is vacant.” Some quotes from the British press: “Allan’s story comes armed with a voyeuristic potency, because she spent 10 years inside the kind of institutions she satirises so well.” – from The Independent. “Her voice is so idiosyncratic in its rhythms and terminology… her habit of exaggeration so surreal and her use of metaphor so extravagant, as to subtly transform the reader’s perspective of the natural order of things.” – from the Telegraph. In the Times (London), a profile of Allan charts her course through mental illness to become a published author. Also, the British cover is way cooler than the American one. An excerpt is available.Set in the fictional Middle Eastern kingdom of Kutar in 1983, Scott Anderson’s Midnight Hotel sounds like a broad satire of America’s travails in that region. Diplomat David Richards first toes the party line, but ends up abandoned in the country watching as American meddling goes awry. An excerpt is available. Scott Anderson is also a war correspondent like his brother Jon Lee Anderson, staff writer for the New Yorker, author of The Fall of Baghdad, and one of my favorite writers.Guillermo Arriaga wrote the screenplays for Amores Perros (which I loved) and 21 Grams (which I hated). The Night Buffalo is his first novel to be published in the U.S, though he originally wrote it 11 years ago. He’s also bringing it to the silver screen (as El Bufalo de la noche). In a profile, the Financial Times compares the novel to Amores Perros, saying that both are steeped in violence, but it sounds to me like 21 Grams, steeped in melodrama. From the jacket: “The Night Buffalo is set in Mexico City, revolving around the mysterious suicide of Gregorio, a charismatic but troubled young man who was betrayed by the two people he trusted most.” Still, I’ll see any movie he writes, so perhaps his novel is worth a try, too.Two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey has a new book out, Theft: A Love Story. The big news about this book is the claim that it is a thinly veiled attack on his ex-wife. The Independent has ex-wife Alison Summers’ side of the story: “The phrase ‘alimony whore,’ repeated within the pages of Theft: A Love Story, has left her feeling ‘devastated’ by Carey’s version of events.” Controversy aside, the Sydney Morning Herald sidesteps the drama and says of the book, which is, indeed, about a man who has been divorced and bankrupted by his former wife, “All in all, Carey’s new show contains much that is lively, engaging and teasingly self-referential.” An excerpt is available.

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4 comments:

  1. You seem to be providing this info pretty uncritically. Do you worry about these methods hurting used bookstores? I know it's a debate between the "long tail" concept and the romanticized, nostalgic thought of wandering through dusty bookstores and finding books you didn't even know you wanted, though I seem trapped on the latter side of this debate. I'd rather put in and take out of these bookstores then try to cut a deal with B&N.

  2. I had a pretty rotten experience with Amazon's "Sell Your Books" program. Other than my credit card number, I was asked no other qualifying information than if I wanted to receive proceeds of my sales in Amazon credit. I said no.

    About a half hour later, following careful inventory of three or four of my collectibles, I received a message telling me my vendor account was rejected, and Amazon would not be able to provide any information about why, nor would it consider repeat applications. I sent follow-up e-mails to different seller customer service e-mails addresses, without ever receiving an explanation for the rejection.

    Even if it was just a glitch, Amazon's refusal to provide either an explanation or a do-over of the application showed some pretty appalling disregard for my time.

  3. I don't know if they're still running it, but Alibris used to also have a link that would allow you to post on Amazon through them for a small fee. I'm not sure if there's a way to link up the new program with that, if they're still doing it at all, but it might be worth checking out.

  4. In response to the first comment by Boston BookEd, while online selling has had a transformative–and overall very negative–effect on the viability of used bookshops, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a shop that's not selling its own books through the methods described in this post, even the dusty shops run by the littlest old ladies.

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Operation Homecoming Hits PBS

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April 14, 2007

Millions contributor Ben penned a post in February about a documentary called Operation Homecoming about the National Endowment of the Arts’ (NEA) program of the same name which is designed to help soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan put their experiences into words. (One participant in the program was Brian Turner whose book of poetry Here, Bullet was reviewed here a few months back.)As was noted in a comment on the original post, Operation Homecoming is also going to be covered as part of a PBS package called America at a Crossroads. That series is set to air beginning this weekend. The 11-part, six-night series covers “the war on terrorism, conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan’ the experience of American troops serving abroad, the struggle for balance within the Muslim world, and global perspectives on America’s role overseas.” The Operation Homecoming installment airs Monday at 10pm (check your local listings, of course.)

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I’m Back

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February 11, 2004

I’ve been a bit under the weather lately, but I think I’m starting to get better. I’m well enough to post here anyway. Which is good, because I noticed a couple of books that I thought people might be interested in. Remember a few years ago when everyone was suddenly talking about “string theory?” This was because of a book by Brian Greene called The Elegant Universe, which somehow managed to solve a longstanding dilemma in the world of physics, that “general relativity and quantum mechanics cannot both be right,” in a book readable enough to become a best seller. Greene proved to be one of those remarkable writers, of which there are very few, who have the ability to make a very boring and difficult topic interesting for everyone. And now he has a new book out: The Fabric of the Cosmos : Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality, in which he continues to unwind scientific complexities with a combination of analogy and wit.My friend Edan pointed out another interesting, new book to me other day. Dancing with Cuba: A Memoir of the Revolution by the remarkably named, Alma Guillermoprieto. Edan and I both read an excerpt of this book in the New Yorker a while back. I enjoyed the way Guillermoprieto’s fierce Latin personality was tempered by her lyrical love of dance. This book seems perfect for anyone enamored by ballet and/or Cuba.A NoteFrom the book I just finished: “From his windows at MacGregor Road, he watched the President Polk leave the harbour. He knew nothing of President Polk, but assumed that the shipping company would have checked the record, beforehand, for anything scandalous. Then he did miss Audrey, with whom he could have spoken of such things.”

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Art Abounds

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October 13, 2003 | 2 min read

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to see an amazing exhibit at UCLA’s Hammer Museum. I first read about Lee Bontecou in the New Yorker a month or so ago. The article described a young woman artist who had been poised to become a household name, but instead quietly excused herself from the art world for a secluded life in rural Pennsylvania. Now, more than 30 years later she has been coaxed out of hiding for a retrospective that includes the work that first brought her notoriety as well as everything she’s done since then, while working out of the spotlight. I had never heard her name mentioned in art history classes nor had I seen any of her work in New York galleries, yet the article made her work sound undeniably compelling. Having now seen these remarkable wall hangings, constructions, mobiles, and drawings in person, I can say quite frankly that I was truly amazed by her work. It is very difficult to describe Bontecou’s work since it only obliquely relates to the work of other artists of her generation. The intricately fashioned constructions and mobiles are somehow simultaneously emotional and technical, intricate and organic. I implore everyone to see this retrospective. It is a remarkable event. Here’s the deal: 10/5/03 to 1/11/04 at the UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; 2/14/04 to 5/30/04 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and 7/30/04 to 9/27/04 MoMA QNS, New York. Abrams has put out a lovely companion volume for the retrospective. Also in art, yesterday at the bookstore I noticed a good-looking new book by the whimsical architectural illustrator, Matteo Pericoli. In 2001 Pericoli put out a book called Manhattan Unfurled, a hard bound fold out drawing of the Manhattan skyline as viewed from the perimeter of the island. In a simple yet playful continuous line drawing, the whole of the city is captured from viewpoints across the Hudson and East Rivers. His new book Manhattan Within is another hard bound fold out drawing, but this time it takes an insider’s view of the city. In the same style as before, he draws the skyline of the city as seen from within the confines of Central Park. Both books include journals full of Pericoli’s musings and observations as he trekked inside and outside of the city trying to capture its spirit with pen and paper. Taken together, the two books are a refreshingly new take on an old and much used subject. Visit Matteo Pericoli’s website to see his work.

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