We're not there yet
We work hard to aggregate the largest searchable inventory from the broadest mix of booksellers, but we’re still not where we want to be.
Tech consultant Joe Wilcox has been blogging about his attempts to help his daughter find a copy of out-of-print anime book The Art of Cardcaptor Sakura, Vol. 2 priced under $100. When I read of his book search woes, I hit BookFinder.com to see if using our site could have helped him save the trouble of mucking around Google, MSN, Yahoo, and Yahoo Stores. We failed.
We couldn’t find the book. We did turn up several copies ranging in price between $100 and $280, but nothing like the cheap copy he found from a little store in Puerto Rico. “Out of print” is a huge category, and we (i.e. the mainstream North American and European used/rare book search industry) still have very far to go before we can connect every reader with every book available.
Comments
Re this piece "We're not there yet".
You noted that a copy of a book was found in Puerto Rico, but that that buy could not be duplicated through bookfinder. Of course not - that was serendipidy/chance/wonderful luck. Rare book buying/collecting is a vocation, a passion, it's the thrill when items turn up in unexpected places.
Where do you want the book business to be? Do you expect people to find this rare title and sell it for $2.00 ? (this happens more and more now that amatures have entered the marketplace and sell books without caring about their worth - in fact are happy to make their money on postage..) Do you not consider that maybe the scarcity makes it valuable? How much did you pay for your last pair of shoes? They'll last a year and were made in the millions by cheap labour..Yet you want all boooks to be found for $2.00? What causes this mentality? Why do you no longer respect that people go into the used and rare book business as a profession and you are paying for the fact that they have found the rare gem, looked after it and held it til the right person comes along. Why would they sell their stock for two dollars ? I really would appreciate an explanation of how your mind works on this.
Regards
Val Morgan
Posted by: val morgan | December 11, 2005 9:57 AM
I think Bookfinder isn't trying to meet your needs so much as the girl looking for the Cardcaptor book. She was not interested in rare book collecting, not interested in highering a middleman to look for it. She was looking for a book that was published within the last few years, but that she could not find. Average readers are not particularly interested in the thrill of the hunt, nor do we care about holding an ancient first edition in our hands. We like finding the books we want to read, and the cheaper the better. The more books that are for sale and searchable online, the better chance we have of finding a reasonably priced copy. Waiting for the "right buyer" might be rewarding for a bookseller, but most of us use Bookfinder because we are interested in a more efficient way of connecting buyers and sellers. I'd gladly give up serendipity for efficiency. (BTW, no one ever hoped to buy the book for $2. The father was trying to find the book for around cover price.)
Posted by: anonymous | December 14, 2005 11:43 PM
Hmmm... "anonymous" doesn't seem to understand supply and demand. If there are few copies of the book out there and lots of people looking for it, the price wil go up. So this is a $100 book. So what? I don't see how Bookfinder is failing in any way. Without bookfinder, he'd never have even found it for $100. $100 is a steal for a book you want but can't find. There are many thousands of books worth even more. He's lucky to find it for $100.
Does "anonymous" or Bookfinder's proprieter have some problem with rare books being worth lots of money? i don't understand that. It does not matter when the book was published. Scarcity has nothing to do with age.
Posted by: Reply to Anonymous | December 21, 2005 8:09 AM