Where are all the Book Buyers?

[headvasegal]

A decade ago, I started in eBay as a book seller.  My focus has been on the collector, not necessarily the reader.  And business was good.  However, I've noticed a downtick in book sales over the last two years, even highly collectible books and autographed books.   My starting prices are much lower than, say, bookfinder or abebooks, but even auctions with watchers seem to close with no bids, even the many I price under $10.  Are people now buying their books from Amazon and not eBay?  Any other book sellers out there having the same experience?

[18704d]

eBooks.

Over half of all books sold are electronic books now.

Lynn

[southern*sweet*tea]

There are still buyers for them.  They can take a long time to sell, though.

[slippinjimmy]

Are people now buying their books from Amazon and not eBay?

I sell a few books but I'm definitely not a "book seller".

I think you've got it a bit backwards, more and more book sellers who previously used Amazon are coming to eBay because of the dramatic increase in fees for books on Amazon. A number of Amazon's mega-booksellers have started listing on eBay in the past year or so because of that. In addition with the closing of Half.com there will be even more books here.

While many of these sellers deal in common mass market books it's certainly going to clog up the category. Right now just in the Fiction & Non-Fiction subcategories there are 25 MILLION listings on eBay and you have only 31 books listed.

[nowthatsjustducky]

They are probably buying exclusively from one of the two mega book dealers that can dump their inventory here for pennies on the dollar and still turn a profit (and violate policies like not having a picture of the item in the listing, duplicate listings, etc).

[lynnscollectiblesnstuff]

unless I have a book printed by the Gutenberg Printing Press, I wont list it here cause its oversaturated

[copper.boom]

I still buy a lot of books, but they are mostly cookbooks or hobby-related that I want to have on hand and browse through or reference.

Non-fiction & fiction I get from the library, either physical copies or e-books. I also swap with friends a lot.

Books still sell but they can sit for a long time because so many sellers have access to overstock purchased by the pound and can sell them for next to nothing. Books on Amazon are listed for literally a penny. Profit is made from the $3.99 shipping fee because MM rates are less than that.

The market is very flooded, especially with ebooks on the rise and people clearing out what they consider to be "clutter" which can mean more books in circulation.

A friend asked me if I would sell a stack of books she had. I took a look, pulled one from the pile to list and told her to donate the rest because they were so common and I didn't want to sit on them for years or list them for a penny.

At the same time, if I try to buy children's books for relatives it seems prices for them are always much higher! It's harder to get a deal unless you go to a library book sale.

[good.junque]

I sold books a long time ago but I now only buy them.  I buy them when I have a surplus in my Paypal account from selling.  My Paypal is empty now as I haven't listed anything for sale in a year or so.  I  love murder mysteries and collect all my favorite authors.  I need to do some selling again in order to do any buying again.  Perhaps others are having the same problem?

Laurie

[doubledz-a2z]

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@copper.boom wrote:

Books on Amazon are listed for literally a penny. 

Ah yes the penny gallery.    I am still drawn to non-fiction books at rummage sales and get some great deals on boxes full.  I take them to the swap meet and do well that way however I used to have a group of buyers come by with their barcode scanners and really nice coffee table books got 'rejected' by A.   Too many of them and not even worth a penny.  Sad.  I too started ebay selling rarer books and old paper.  I still do well with it but at swap meets where folks can peruse box fulls.   It just seems like with folks becoming sellers now and it is all a race to the bottom. 

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[femmefan1946]

While my booksales have definitely dropped since I started selling in 2001, I have sold more than I thought in the past month. (I have several IDs with different product lines, but I do my bookkeeping as a single spreadsheet.)

I specialize in Science Fiction and sell worldwide.

I do notice that certain authors do better than most. And that those authors tend to be 'classic' which makes me think that my buyers are older and prefer the print books, since most of them are in print -- electronically if not on bookstore shelves.

Selling internationally was a no-brainer for me, since I am in Canada, and the bulk of my sales go to the USA, but since most of my books are in English, my overseas customers live in countries with dependable postal systems.

I tried selling on AZ, but the system works against the small bookseller, especially for books that do not has US based ISBN numbers.

[good.junque]

I can only speak for myself but I suspect that you're right about us older buyers,  Femmefan.  I only buy "real books", never the electronic.  Most of my books are by US authors but I also have Dick Francis, Agatha Cristy and Patricia Moyes who are English authors and, although not murder mysteries, the Jalna series that are Canadian.

Laurie

[femmefan1946]

I look under the table at book sales.

If there are boxes of books by that writer under there, I don't buy.

Best sellers, ain't.

My overall bestseller is fairly easy to come by here and I usually sell a copy a month. It's a French immersion textbook called Bescherelle 12 000 Verbes. Others are CS Lewis, Douglas Adams and John Wyndham.

[flp]

I never just put up one book for sale because I can't compete with the bigger book sellers.  What I do do is to put sets of books together (mostly children's or teen's) that I collect from sales etc.  I try for at least 10 in a set (sometimes less) because the shipping works more in my favor that way.  I don't ask for much because this is a hobby for me.  Even so, sometimes I sell quite a bit and sometimes, like now, it's slower.

[lacemaker3]

I'm a book buyer ... I'm a collector, in a specific field (or two) ... the books I look for are usually out of print and rare because they are highly technical.

I rarely buy books on eBay because they are usually much too expensive. I always look here when I decide to buy one, and occasionally I will find a text book I need from a small seller.

But mostly, the books on eBay are posted by megasellers who are (all) listing from (the same) online databases rather than books they have on hand, and the prices are outrageous.

When I want a book, I find it, and I buy it, but it is rarely found on eBay at a reasonable price.

[slippinjimmy]

ebooks are "dying", well that's an exageration but sales of ebooks has been declining over the past couple of years at a rather alarming rate.

On the other hand actual printed book sales are rising and it's actually mostly driven by younger buyers.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/mar/14/ebook-sales-continue-to-fall-nielsen-survey-uk-book-sa...

There are many similarities with the situation with music, cd sales are in the tank and recently digital downloads have been falling. On the other hand vinyl sales to "kids" are zooming.