Big Calif. bookseller goes bust, blames Web
If you're within driving distance of Southern California, you might want to check the going-out-of-business sale at The Book Baron. Anaheim's huge dealer of used and rare books lost its lease and began selling its inventory of 400,000 volumes at 40 percent off this week. I'm sure there are still a few good picks left, and the discount will rise as the lease's end draws near (the end of 2007).Here's a TV news report from the local ABC affiliate. Click on the play button and you'll have to endure a 10-second commercial, then hear the store owner blame Internet booksellers for putting him out of business. And then he goes on to bemoan the fact that so many people need to touch and feel a book before they buy, and of course you can't do that online.
OK, I know certain people like to blame everything on "the Internet." After 15 years, I'm used to it. But hey, The Book Baron was on the Internet too. Did they put themselves out of business, or did they let rest of us do it?
Labels: collectible books
posted by Steve Weber at 7/06/2007
9 Comments:
The news report/story seems to be saying that the internet pushed him out. Yet the owner says he is just ready to retire.
If he is "retiring" than obviously the store has made him enough to retire.
The problem I see with a lot of older dealers is that they refuse to accept that prices have fallen in many genres/titles.
I know veteran dealers that refuse to lower prices on books. They still want 500 for a book that has 20 copies at 250.
We had the same thing happen in our town (sort of) when the local hardware store went out of business. The owner blamed Lowe's and the Home Depot, but he was at retirement age and had been cutting his business back for years. For a lot of guys, "We were doing fine until the big stores/internet/shopping mall came in and drove us out of business" sounds better than "I'm old. Time to go fishing."
His interview in the Orange Co Register blamed a rent increase which made the store unprofitable to buy out. No mention of Internet competition being a key factor was made in print. I think uncle pavian is right, it was time to go fishing.
But the store will be missed. We unloaded a lot of inventory for trade credit and sold a few as well.
When I lived in Orange County I would go to the Book Baron. Over the years I saw them grow and expand their bookstore. They were my favorite used book store in Orange County, but often their books were over priced. Anytime the book was out of print they would always jack up the price as if out of print always meant the book was worth something. The internet has brought supply and demand together in a way it should have always been.
I don't feel sorry for them. I have seen them on Amazon and I doubt they are going to sell anything good at 40% off even if they are closing their store.
I've been a customer of Book baron since moving to CA in the early '80s & never fail to visit when I'm back in that area. I agre that the Internet has helped level the supply/demand equation & made prices more realistice; but it has also hurt by virtue of the "penny sellers,'' who artifically skew prices downward & make it hard for legitimate book dealers. Regardless, the guys at Book Baron were some of the last great bookmen who knew & loved books & they will be sorely missed.
Here we go with bashing penny sellers again. A book won't stay at a penny unless there really are too many copies out there. Lee Iaccoca's books are priced at a penny because you really can't give them away.
Let me tell you another penny book story. There's a book I've sold numerous times called The Not So Big House. On a good month you can get $15 for it. Sometimes it drops to $9 or a little less, depending on what new copies are selling for.
The first time I experimented with repricing software in 2005, a price war had driven that book down to a penny, and the software I was using obliged. I was livid, especially because it's not a cheap book to ship.
But even though there were people willing to sell that book for a penny, it didn't stay at that level. As soon as the two or three penny copies out there sold, it rebounded. I've sold several copies since then. I try to keep the price over $12 and I usually succeed.
Books that have sufficient demand will always always rebound. It's what free markets are all about. And the Internet is the ultimate free market.
Some books definitely have a sell-by date (but it's not printed anywhere). Some are obvious. There's a brief window with each Phil McGraw book where it's both common as dirt and profitable to sell, before it becomes a penny book and stays there. Some are less obvious. The current edition of The Reader's Digest Complete Do-It Yourself Manual is a solid $10 book until it hits market saturation. Then it sinks to unprofitable levels.
Accumulate too many books that are past their sell-by date, and you can be stuck with a lot of immovable inventory. But that was a problem before the Internet came along too.
I can see two ways the Internet is hurting established booksellers. One is that some people who previously would have sold books to a dealer are cutting out the middleman and selling them themselves. College students can buy their textbooks online and sell them themselves afterward. A lot do. The other thing is that people can set up shop on the Internet and run the business out of a spare bedroom or the basement and not have the overhead of a traditional storefront. But that pressure is affecting all retailers, no matter what size they are or what they sell.
And it's telling that Dell, the company who became the biggest computer seller by selling entirely online, is starting to sell at retail to try to recapture the top spot.
Dave, You make some good points on the economics of bookselling, but my main point was regret that true bookmen, like those who run Book Baron & other long-established brick & mortar stores, are dying out...My main problem with the penny sellers is the emphasis on books as a commodity: the ones I've encountered wouldn't know a point or state or why a certain book is important socioculturally, aesthetically, or in the author's corpus of work, or appreciate the historical linkages in a presentation copy, or appreciate the feel of a fine leather volume or the smell...the wonderful smell...of walking into a great old bookstore...all they care about is how much it will sell for...a true bookperson knows & loves books...& does so with no expectations that it will make him or her rich. A guy with a scanner sees the dollar signs first & the book second (if at all). That's why its tragic when places like Book Baron are no more...
Wow, great post, Steve. If we all can remember, the booksellers themselves are responsible for everyone plugging their book (lol, no pun intended) on the internet because it takes so much for those of us who aren't with NY houses to even get into these bookstores. So, I feel they only have themselves to blame.
I see both sides of this, since I am a book BUYER as well as a SELLER (sorry for caps, really did want to stress this). I think online sales have driven some stores out of business, primarily those who sell new books, not used books (although I'm sure some used book sellers who have brick and mortar stores could argue otherwise, don't consider myself an expert on that topic).
As a buyer, I do think I can provide info. I use Amazon Prime as well as buying from individual sellers on Amazon. I go strictly on price and feedback and sometimes Amazon is the only seller, not an individual marketplace seller (rare, but it happens). If this is the case, I use Amazon because I have free shipping and, yes, this means the bookstore owner loses out, because my time is at a premium and I do not want to drive any more than I have to, especially with gas prices being what they've been :0 I save far more than the Amazon Prime price per year, in gas and time alone, not to mention ease of delivery.
On the other hand, there are STILL plenty of people who are not internet savvy and who are so impatient to have the newest book that they will go to a bookstore, as people did when the latest Harry Potter book came out. For them, driving to a store is worth it.
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