Could you put the name of the shop on each search result? That way people can better pick their shop of choice (and avoid the ones they do not want to buy from).
Great idea. I'll implement that for sure. Another thing I'm working on is a "No Amazon" filter that just skips Amazon and any Amazon subsidiaries from the results
The no-Amazon thing is maybe a little complicated. Many 'independent' book dealers have deals with Amazon, for example to use Amazon's shipping, inventory, or print on demand infrastructure, to sell through Amazon either exclusively or non-exclusively, or to be a channel through which Amazon routes divests books returned to Amazon. Those deals with Amazon make Amazon money and make Amazon more powerful, because Amazon can impose anti-competitive terms on the potential competitors who make such deals with them. The California attorney general recently announced a suit to try to stop these anti-competitive b2b deals by Amazon, but it is very hard to constrain such Goliaths. I would rather exclude every seller who has any business relationship with Amazon from my book search results, but there is no way to know who does or doesn't, as there is no required disclosure of such things, and lawyers are good at hiding them.
The market for inexpensive copies of books in the US is a complete mess, particularly wrt used books. If you look on-line, you can find lots and lots of used books for sale from book dealers. Many are priced way above what they cost new or what a similar new book would sell for today. Many books recently released are available in used condition at prices well above what the same books are still selling for new -- ie the original publisher's list price -- why is that? Even stranger, if you have used books that you have read and want to sell, you will have a very hard time finding any book dealers who want to buy them. Most used book dealers don't buy used books from people who buy and read books. A few will, but they are very selective and almost all of them offer only in-store credit, not money. But they all have lots of used books listed for sale at $20 to $100 or more plus shipping. Where do they get their books? Are books that we donate to thrift shops and library book sales getting recycled through the book dealers at such high prices? It looks like that may be what's going on.
I know that these dealers have expenses, and many of them may not even be very profitable, but modern automation and materials handling machines are amazing and are supposed to allow very efficient management of inventories and sales, and that's not what we've got. If the typical used book was listed like on the OTC stock market, the bid price would be around 25 cents and the ask price would be around 50 dollars. Market failure. What's it take to fix it?
shnksi|3 years ago
lucas_membrane|3 years ago
The market for inexpensive copies of books in the US is a complete mess, particularly wrt used books. If you look on-line, you can find lots and lots of used books for sale from book dealers. Many are priced way above what they cost new or what a similar new book would sell for today. Many books recently released are available in used condition at prices well above what the same books are still selling for new -- ie the original publisher's list price -- why is that? Even stranger, if you have used books that you have read and want to sell, you will have a very hard time finding any book dealers who want to buy them. Most used book dealers don't buy used books from people who buy and read books. A few will, but they are very selective and almost all of them offer only in-store credit, not money. But they all have lots of used books listed for sale at $20 to $100 or more plus shipping. Where do they get their books? Are books that we donate to thrift shops and library book sales getting recycled through the book dealers at such high prices? It looks like that may be what's going on.
I know that these dealers have expenses, and many of them may not even be very profitable, but modern automation and materials handling machines are amazing and are supposed to allow very efficient management of inventories and sales, and that's not what we've got. If the typical used book was listed like on the OTC stock market, the bid price would be around 25 cents and the ask price would be around 50 dollars. Market failure. What's it take to fix it?
johnorourke|3 years ago