Annie Frisbie, the Superfast Reader, sends me information about a scheme called BookMooch, a simple book exchange program. After joining, you list the books you want to give away on the site, send them to someone who asks for them (for which you get points), and then use your points to order books from other people.
Sounds like a conspiracy to take money out of writers’ pockets, say I.
You know, it’s one of the ironies of life. Writers depend on the sale of new books to make a living. We only get paid for that first sale. When I shop at Half Price Books (as I do more than anywhere else), and buy used books, I’m not showing solidarity with my comrades in labor, but profiting only the carrion birds of the bookstore.
However, as a midlist author, I just don’t have a lot of money to spend on new books (which are, I think, generally overpriced). Thus do I cut mine own economic throat.
A friend just told me she found a signed copy of The Year of the Warrior in a used bookstore.
I don’t really seriously imagine that everybody who’s bought a book from me at a Viking event, and got it autographed, fell in love with it and wouldn’t be parted from it.
But it still rankles.
Take physic, pomp!
Jane has done quite a lot with a similar site, PaperbackSwap.com. She’s quite pleased with it.
Yes, that looks good too. IF YOU’RE INTO STEALING THE BREAD FROM AUTHORS’ MOUTHS! 😉
I got introduced to you, Lars, through a $3 copy of Erling’s Word that I bought in Scottsdale used-book store. Would my book-buying sins be expunged if I told you that I since bought two e-book copies of Year of the Warrior and one of West Oversea?
Wow. You can afford half-price books.
I mostly buy thrift.
But, only on half-price Wednesday and Thursday.
I’m pathetic and I know it.
Loren: Vos es venia.
Judy: I feel your pain. You must be a writer too.
I think this will change somehow, somewhere. Not that used books will pay royalties to the authors, but then again maybe they will one day. And then again, maybe publishers will hire authors who will write for salary.
Thanks to PaperBackSwap I have developed a small yet pretty efficient system for, um, stealing from authors like Lars. My local thrift store has a very good book section, where I have found, in addition to the plethora of David Hasselhoff autobiographies, a surprising quantity of trade paperbacks in good condition for seventy five cents. I take such books and list them on PaperBackSwap. By means of this alchemy I have turned the base metals of Robert Graves, Toni Morrison, Susan Sontag, etc. into the gold of Robert Benchley, W.H. Auden, Anton Chekhov, M.F.K. Fisher, Charles Portis, etc.
Phil: Such deals already exist. They’re called work for hire, and considered not terribly desirable, because if you sell a lot of books, you still only get the flat fee.
Tickletext: Shrewd. I don’t think I’d ever have thought of that.
My favorite thing about PaperBackSwap: if you don’t want to be bothered with shipping out books to earn points, you can buy credits for $3.45 each. That way you can get anything in their system for even cheaper than a $0.01 used book on Amazon, where shipping always costs $3.99.
Lars, I’ve bought one of your books and read another by checking it out from the library, which I suppose is the ultimate insult. Sorry.
(Sigh) When will you people realize that it’s *all* *about* *me*?
I confess—while I have been known to sell books at Half-Price Books, I buy only NEW NEW NEW books. I want those crisp pristine pages. I want that new book smell. No cigaret ashes for me, cookie crumbs, or dribbles of wine or coffee. I want NEW, baby. The exceptions of course, are for books out of print, in which case I will take whatever I can find, though I’ve been known to drop a bundle on a first edition.
Bless my husband—he never complains about the money I spend on books. Finally though, I’ve developed a variation on Loren Eaton’s “middle shelf” idea. I’m slowly consolidating my books to 40 running feet of book shelving (roughly two bookcases) down from about 500 feet of books. It’s so terribly painful.
Deborah, you’re an example to us all. I thank you and my publisher thanks you.
Yeah, I didn’t think writing for salary would be very profitable for the writer. I read something about it once, written by a guy who collaborated on a Dungeons & Dragons papaerback. (You know, I like that spelling of papaer. It’s an extra letter, but it gives the antique quality it has picked up in recent years.)
Most of the classic literature in my book accumulation (I’m not selective enough to call it a collection) came from estate auctions. Many a child has gone off to college where they were forced to buy a collection of books by Dickens, Dostoyevski and Dante for a literature class which were never opened because they actually used the Cliff Notes to pass the exams. Said books were left in a box in mom and dad’s attic while going off to fall in love, get married, make children and in general have a life. Thirty years later the boxes of English and American Literature find their way onto a hay wagon on a sunny summer afternoon where they sit while all the quilts, come-a-longs and knick-knacks are sold first.
When the boxes of books are finally offered for sale somewhere around 3:47 in the afternoon the auctioneer and all the auctionees are weary and broke, so they start piling all sorts of odds and ends together. “Who will bid a dollar for this Potato Ricer, a roll of rusty barbed wire fence and this box of books?” “Ok, we’ll throw in the encyclopedia set. Who has a dollar? We’ll give you the broken, worn out Vegamatic too.” “If you bid now you can also have this assortment of Ginsu knives!” At that point I offer a quarter and walk away with the whole pile. That’s how the foundations of my library were laid.
You’re a shark, Greybeard. Charles Dickens is in poverty because of you.
I do sell books to Uncle Hugo’s when I am done with them because of environmental considerations (and greed) but when they are books that do not get a lot of exposure I always felt that at least it is “promoting” the author when someone buys it that might not have. I think overall a writer will end up with more total sales when their books circulate and get passed on. Also, I spend on books what I am going to so if I never bought some used I would just end up buying less resulting in less exposure to more authors. I have read used books that have made me go out and find new ones by the same author. With you I read 1 new, bought a second used,a magazine story used, and another new. It all equals out in the end I think.
You’re entirely correct, Dan. Thanks for your support.