Library Booksales

[bugler1998]

Taylor:  This is directed mainly at you, but hopefully others may have insight.

Last weekend I was headed to an estate sale at an older suburb, in a relatively affluent suburb of St. Louis County.

On my way in to town I saw a sign advertising a library book sale from 2-4 pm on a Saturday.  As it was before 2 I kept going and marked my mind to stop on my way home.

When 
I returned at 3:30 pm, I stopped and realized it said bag sale from 2-4 pm.  Being short of time I went in and decided if I had 20 minutes to closing, 
I needed to get moving and decided I could buy a bag of cd's quicker.

I was shocked at the quality of the inventory.  Lots of Rock cds, movie soundtracks, and good choices for antique mall inventory, with 3-4 cds worth selling online.

With 3 minutes to closing I did not have time to pick the books, but made a note of the September date for the next sale.

This was in a basement of a small church.

My comment:  I was surprised at the quality of the inventory, all of which was donated.  Are these sales of donated books usually this good?  Taylor, is most of your sale material donated, as compared to library inventory?

[cumos55]

There are many organizations that will have book sales in the city where I live and  in towns/cities close to where I live.

Pricing is perfect for someone that wants to buy books and then  sell books.....

People start lining up about 45 minutes before a sale and that line can be long .... before the sale starts....  Sometimes the organizers may limit the number people that can enter the sale at any one time...  The logic is to get there early.

These organizations have inventory based on donations....  Some organizations will have one sale in the spring and a second sale the fall of each year.....

These organizations do very well....  One organization had close $170,000 in sales on the first day of a sale, and close to a quarter million in sales over three days.  New inventory was constantly being added to the sale for the first two days..

If a bookseller knows what to look for and where to look...  books are presented by topic on the tables... a book  seller will find a lot of good to very good inventory.... to sell.  

These large sales are "charity" sales... then there is the local library that sells donations... and then some private organizations that also have book sales in local towns/cities... also a few good church sales

Some months in the spring or in the fall can be crazy with book sales, and more books sales

and... this is on top of all of the local thrift stores.

If a book seller knows where to go , and what to look for....  they can find a lot of very good inventory to sell  at some super good prices....

These sales are not based on ex-library books.  Ex-library books might have... too... too many library stickers, tags and more.

[bugler1998]

Thank you cumos.  I used to attend the charity sales and they did have big crowds.  Too many novels and best sellers for me to be able to find the scarce books that are the bread and butter of my current sales, and at a price that make it difficult to make a profit at the antique mall.

I need to try the library donation sales to see if Ifind anything different.  Thank you for your information.  When I used to attend a local big dollar charity sale, I would he5re accusations by the shoppers that insiders were hiding the good sturff for their friends.  I never knew how the insiders figured out what was good, though.

[cumos55 · Accepted solution]

Tuesday is my day to find new inventory.  About 14 Thrift stores are visited. ... an all day trip  

I will do well at a store for years and then things drop off... and I find a new seller on eBay is most likely visiting that store.

Then another store or other stores will become very good sources of inventory.

Every store will be visited.....  because... one never knows what will be found...

Always look for the "good"  books  because you never know where they will be found....  Keep looking no matter what.

I was once at a checkout and saw someone putting out "new"  books on the shelf.... went back and found three quite valuable regimental histories ( I live in Canada).

------------------------------------------

There is one very large sale  with a great variety of books.....  my most favorite sale... two sales each year..

There is one table  with some very unique books.....  There were some very unique books  that sold very quickly at the last sale...  then ... always...there is a table full of classics.. another table  with military, then art books,  then sports books,  then more, and more, and more....   something for everyone

---------------------------------

I know someone who looks for first editions...  and sometimes he just finds "gold"... a most valuable book in almost perfect condition.... at this large sale

If you do not look... you will not find "it".....  This is my approach... and I will keep looking...  Found a new sale last year with super good books, and most reasonable prices....

[taylor_memorial]

Sorry to chime in so late, been going through a struggle with the library about whether or not the library will continue their relationship with the Friends.

Over the past couple years I've noticed a few things about our sale. We consistently take in about the same amount of money from the public. My income (and theirs) from donations I take on consignment has been steadily increasing.

The number of return booksellers has shrunk. I expect this is mostly do to external pressures and has nothing to do with any cherry-picking I might be doing because our sale income is pretty steady.

As for the type and quality of books coming down from the library? Well we tend to get more best-seller fiction earlier in the cycle because the library will buy 5 copies to circulate and thin them down to 1 in short order. But we tend to pulp a whole lot more library discards now than we did, say, 5 years. ago.

We are losing some of our outlets for leftovers: prisons for some reason think that bedbugs like books. Maybe they do when inmates hide books under their mattresses. We have lost access to any megaseller willing to pay more for books than we get from the local pulp mill.

I will say that we seem to be in a cycle of donation from the general public with rather significant books. Lots of pristine Manga; boxes of old YA novels. Folks my age have parents that are dying off by the dozens. As often as not the 19th century and early 20th century books aren't being kept.

But until this recent shake up, we were getting leftovers from estate sales and local FOL sales as well as straight donations.

[bugler1998]

Taylor:  thanks for the reply.  I hope things go well with you and the library.

As long as your numbers stay strong, you should be fine.  Just be ready to accept change.  Over the years I have started selling different items as times changed.  Our entire county library system has been rebuilt in recent yesrs, as the needs of the “customer” have changed.

Just be ready.

Right now I am keeping my eyes out for high end model jet fighters  and space craft models from the estate sales of local mcdonnell aircraft workers.  While a jet model takes up more room on the shelf than a book, there is more profit once I make a sale.  The problem is shipping of models is more expensive and the chances of breakage is higher.

I Hope they treat you right.

mike

[lludwig]

Bugler1998 In the last 20 years of going to various booksales, I have found that the vast majority of books are donated and not ex-library books. There was one exception where it was overwhelmingly ex-library books. We went twice to make sure we had not just hit an 'off year' but the second time was as disappointing as the first. It may have changed. I have found some nice books at some of the smaller out of the way sales as well as ones in upscale areas.

Many of the booksale announcements on booksalefinder give an estimate of donated books.

[taylor_memorial]

If you are interested in the details, look at FB for Friends of the Cuyahoga Falls Library for an eyeful of what is going on there.

Briefly: the new Librarian has made the Library the talk of the County and not in a good way. Library employees are picketing because she refused to offer a contract to the Union; our neighbors are buzzing with the news about her attempts to shut us down.

The problem is we have a library board that is, for the most part, life-time appointments who want nothing more than a title for prestige and to avoid making any decisions. So an ambitious person can push her (or his) agenda without resistance from those who are supposed to oversee.

She booted the Friends off the Board for communicating Library news to the Friends--which is the only reason we were on the board. Because we found out there were Fire Code issues we withheld funds from her summer programs and she is accusing us of ambushing her by cutting off funds for repairs that she had no intention of telling us we were going to be responsible for making.

[bugler1998]

Taylor:  i was confused when I first read your last post.  But then I read the article about the friends of the library and 

the brief mention of union issues.  The pickets are all we need to know.

i dont know about how dependant you are on the library for inventory, but you should be able to find your new inventory easy enough.

you know how to sell better than any of us.

If we can help you get restarted, if that is what you want to do, let us know.

mike

[taylor_memorial]

While it is an unprecedented situation, and I'm a bit upset about it, I'm not concerned about my future selling books, other libraries have already asked me to join their Friends' staff.

The union pickets is one situation created entirely by the New Librarian.
The end of the Friends of the Library is a separate but simultaneous situation created entirely by the New Librarian.

Both were "addressed" at the last library board meeting. The Friends' problems goes back to 1985 when the Library was built: at that time the City Library was relocated and the Trust which ran the old building was partnered to tax payer funding to create the new outlet. About 1500 SF of basement space was earmarked for the Friends sales and sorting areas.

Unfortunately, back in that day somebody chose to be pennywise and labeled our rooms as "storage" to avoid a few dollars of expenses in making it suitable for occasional public use during sales. So from 1985 to 2019 the Friends have held sales in a room which is not code compliant for public use.

What's the big deal? A couple of sprinkler heads are too low for the shelving units we have and the shelves block the emergency strobes. A couple grand would fix the situation. And some duct work which could be reworked or walled off due to a head room issue: ceiling height can be no lower than 8 foot in public rooms for some reason.

Had the rooms been "Friends" rooms, then these things would have had to been dealt with then.

Still, today: no real problem if the Library would give us written permission to modify their building as it needs to be modified. If they let us do it, we'd be back in business in no time. But if THEY do it, they have to put proposals out to bid and all that and that stretches a 3 week hiatus into 1 year and a half, or more. That's the difference between a tax-payer funded expense and a private party funded expense.

Other "Best Practices" issues are at loggerheads. The Librarian does not want us to have representation on the Board, where as the ALA and AFLA (American Friends of Library Association) both call for the situation we had.  She wants to limit our stock to bar-code only books. And we aren't going to operate under her rules. Period.

Hope this helps.

ME? I've managed to create quite a kerfluffle in local politics by blabbing this all over the local FB pages and getting the public all riled up about it.

[bugler1998]

Taylor:  wow!

while it does sound like there are multiple issues going on, The scariest discussion you mention is the “barcode only debate”

so your citizens can only read books printed in the last 20 years or so?

Beyond that, they can only read books published in quantities large enough to justify the expense of a barcode?

sounds like barcode censorship to me. Are you going to burn every book that does not fit the barcode model?

when I first remember you on this board, you change your ebay Id several times.  Do I sense a future change?

glad to hear you appear to have a plan.

[taylor_memorial]

I can't really speak to the selection criteria for the Library qua Library: their acquisitions have been changing towards the multimedia for some time now, from what I can tell about what gets culled out. We always have been a bedroom community--at least since after WWI. There is some industry, but not enough to support the city.

So the culture tends towards the popular, as it will. So there is a steady stream of popular novels in all genres, not so much westerns though. I'd guess there are very few "old books" in her/their collection at this point. It's not a rare book library or depository, just a small city library.

She's got this absolutely cockamamie idea that books aren't anything more than library sale prices to the library, despite being told to her face what I've received for some books that have been donated.  And she's afraid of mildew and mold, not unreasonably so: but we toss those out regularly so contamination really is not an issue.

She wants to limit books we sell to post 1965, which is effectively bar code only, so far as I'm concerned. And we get them regularly back to the early 19th century and sporadically into the 18th century. Any earlier and the community is too hip not to know those are worth something in real terms.

She does have personality issues--with about everybody she deals with, apparently. And beyond that, control issues: she returns a million bucks a year from her budget and can't see fit to offer a meaningful raise to anybody. And wants to control us, not just associate and spend our money, but micromanage to the Nth degree.

[bugler1998]

She returns a million dollars a year from her budget?

I am never in favor of wasting money, but with rare exceptions when a legislative body sets a budget, they expect the money to be spent.  

I live in a relatively affluent newer suburb of St. Louis.  Incorporated in @1987, we do not have many parks, and the city just has not spent tax money on parks.  Slowly the available land is disappearing.

Taylor, I know you and I do not agree politically in many ways, but I suspect we are in agreement here.  But I don’t understand why she doesnt like to sell donated books.

Good luck to your city.

[taylor_memorial]

Our library was originally funded by a Trust established by one of the founding families--the Taylors.  One of the reasons the control of the library is so foobarred. So not spending the yearly budget improves the Trust. There's probably some clauses in the Trust language that require it remain suitably endowed. It is not all tax money, and while the actual accounting is fuzzy on purpose, there is no doubt enough Trust fund money in operating funds that the tax monies aren't being squirreled away: money is fungible.

As for her thinking--I dunno what it is. Or why. The conjecture is she's on a power trip. "Those who don't agree with my plan should be put in jail" to quote a politician who shall remain nameless. The fact is that running a library is different from running a book store; and both of those endeavors are different still from serving a community by acting as concentration for them to recycle their lifestyles.

Most public libraries don't maintain deep collections of single authors the way any reader will, it doesn't matter what or who the collection is centered on. We might have all 4 of the L'Engle children's cycle but I guarantee we don't have any of her Christian apologetics. Same for Eugenia Price.

There has been much talk about why penny sellers sell for a penny and the cost of shelf space. Libraries have the same issues. Books that don't circulate in a community are a waste of space and the community sensibility changes over time. We will have 10 copies of the latest movie in circulation for a couple months and then 8 or 7 of them come down the stairs to be sold.  The same is true for best sellers.

And folks like us won't even think of buying them on the aftermarket for resale because by the time they get to us in an FOL sale they are mostly used up.

So ANY LIBRARIAN is going to have a view of collection maintenance that is at odds with those of a brick and mortar bookstore colleciton and both of those are going to have a different approach than a Friends group.

We, at the Friends, are at the bottom of a funnel that sucks in whatever comes near it. We sort through it and toss the **bleep**--the moldy, stinky, falling apart and worn out books. Thankfully I'm there to pick through the last two categories and pick up some stuff that is worth some money: what I can sell to the collector market here and there is not what we can sell in our book room.

If you can't read the spine of a book, you aren't going to pull it out of a shelf because the title catches your interest. But I can sell that book on eBay because I can picture it in ways the shelf can't present it. The Library feeds off the best seller lists, the school system curricula, and the community culture. The Library knows the county depository is bike ride, a bus ride, a short jaunt away. University libraries abound within a 50 mile radius.

And our community has been home to engineers and teachers and professors and plenty of other professional types that have the time, interest and money to collect books of all sorts.

The fact is that before I became totally involved with this FOL, for pecuniary reasons, they had a less focused approach to books because whomever they had picking for the internet wasn't motivated. They sort books by genre, shelf by author and toss out by condition without regard for content.  Certainly my approach to the sub collection I maintain for sale here is different from the approach I take to the collection at the library--but I can use the FOL rooms to collect an author to offer online in a lot to earn more than the FOL would earn if they sold them all for their prices. And I get my cut.

We've cultivated our symbiotic relationships for half a century and they have worked very well. We get matching donations from the entire northeast quarter of the country, because our sales generate that kind of interest.