Highlights
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2024-12-11 14:51 After Amazon opened its online store in 1995, the number of independent bookstores dropped by 43%. But the industry has rebounded over the last 15 years. Today, there are around 2,500 independent bookstores. And according to the American Booksellers association, there are another 200 or so stores planned to open in the near future. It seems that some book buyers still want to browse shelves that have been curated by knowledgeable booksellers.
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2024-12-11 14:50 These are books we can offer maybe 20%. These ones we can offer more. Then sometimes we’ll separate out special cases for books that I’ll have to look up or do research on. Sometimes I need to go to the library and take out a reference book in Order to figure out what edition is this, how many copies of this book were made. But often we’re just making piles of books and separating them based on how well we think they’ll do in the store.
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2024-12-11 14:50 What kinds of books are easiest to sell? That’s the paperback fiction. We churn out so much of it every day that it supports everything else, really. People are reading a lot of science fiction and fantasy.
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2024-12-11 14:51 Hernandez typically offers 15 to 30% of a book’s resale value or more if the seller is willing to take store credit instead of cash. But some popular books will fetch a higher price. Let’s say, for example, we’ve got a $10 book of fiction, a paperback that I think will sell very quickly.
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2024-12-11 14:51 We could pay up to 8 in store credit. That person who brought in that one book may be able to leave with another book as like a swap, in part because I know that that book is going to sell, that it’ll just become cash very quickly, versus a 2 for it and give $4 in store credit. That is going to have to pay more rent, really, because it’s going to sit on the shelf for longer.
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2024-12-11 14:50 And collectibles like first editions and signed books tend to sit on the shelf for even longer. If it’s worth 100 because the time to photograph it, to catalog it might be 50 extra bucks, it might be 100 extra bucks. And then the time that it takes sitting on the shelf might be another 50 bucks, might be another hundred. You’re in total paying 250 to 300 for a book you’re going to sell for 500. You net out like half.
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2024-12-11 14:51 Buying books is a gamble. You can’t be sure how long it’ll take for a particular volume to sell, but you can make an educated guess. What I’m looking for are books that I’ve sold many times before. If I know I might have a client for it, you’re more likely to buy it. Are there books that we don’t have at the moment?