{"id":5723,"date":"2010-10-07T00:04:28","date_gmt":"2010-10-07T04:04:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=5723"},"modified":"2012-07-07T11:16:33","modified_gmt":"2012-07-07T16:16:33","slug":"the-sad-tale-of-the-used-book-hunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/10\/07\/the-sad-tale-of-the-used-book-hunter\/","title":{"rendered":"The sad tale of the used book hunter"},"content":{"rendered":"

By way of Walter Olson’s Twitter feed<\/a>, a story of real life arbitrage — the Confessions of a Used Book Salesman<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

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.<\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure I first heard about the practice of shopping for books with laser scanners in a story on NPR, which, as I recall it, disparaged their use as classless. And, really, it is precisely this. The book merchant of the high-cultural imagination is a literate compleat and serves the literate. He doesn’t need a scanner, because he knows more than the scanner knows. I fill a different niche — I deal in collectible or meaningful books only by accident. I’m not deep, but I am broad. My customer is anyone who needs a book that I happen to find and can make money from. <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My economics side says this is a good thing: connecting buyers with their desired purchases. My bibliophile side says this is somehow morally wrong . . . or if not precisely wrong<\/em>, then tainted or shady. I’m not sure how to reconcile my feelings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By way of Walter Olson’s Twitter feed, a story of real life arbitrage — the Confessions of a Used Book Salesman: 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, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,25,28],"tags":[833,441],"class_list":["post-5723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-economics","category-media","tag-amazon","tag-marketsineverything"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-1uj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5723"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15883,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5723\/revisions\/15883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}