I do not feel that a book exchange poses a serious risk to online bookselling. While some customers will use a book exchange over a store, they are generally the customers that are interested in the lowest price possible - not ones interested in collecting a book of beauty.
For book scouts, I believe these exchanges offer a good opportunity to discover previously uncirculated books. While I don’t know the quality of book you’d receive through an exchange, it might be worth looking into.
To take a look at BookMooch.com, click here
Hudson, Massachusetts - Baysys Publishing, which runs the web site www.BookSaleFinder.com announced its acquisition of the website and business of Book Sale Scout.
Helen Oram, owner of Book Sale Finder, commented, “We are very pleased to have acquired Book Sale Scout. We have many plans to expand the features offered by Book Sale Finder, and the addition of Book Sale Scout will help with our strategy.”
“Book Sale Finder has proved to be an essential tool for used book dealers, book collectors, homeschoolers, avid readers, and other book lovers. We’re proud that we have been able to serve both book buyers and booksellers, and we are excited about some of the new concepts we will introduce in the next several months,” said Ms Oram.
Book Sale Finder will continue to offer its unique features, notably: Sale Mail - a free service which tells subscribers the dates of upcoming book sales in their area, and Sale Maps - showing the locations of book sales and used book stores, using Google Maps.
At this time, www.BookSaleScout.com will direct visitors to the Book Sale Finder website for book sale information.
ABOUT BOOK SALE FINDER - Since 1994, www.BookSaleFinder.com (formerly called Book Sales in America) has been telling people where to find non-profit and other used book sales, as well as used book auctions, fairs, and various book events. Currently Book Sale Finder publishes details about more than 6,000 sales held annually in the USA and Canada.
It appears more and more people are adopting the Internet as their primary method for acquiring books. “Publishers Weekly” has reported: “Bookstore sales continued their perfect record in 2007 in May, falling for the fifth consecutive month. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, sales in May were down 4.3%, to $1.10 billion, and were off by the same percentage for the first five months of the year. Bookstore sales totaled $6.20 billion in the January through May period. For the entire retail segment, sales were up 5.6% in May and were ahead 4.1% for the first five months of 2007.”
Michael S. Hyatt of Thomas Nelson Publishers has an excellent article covering some of the impact factors affecting brick and mortar bookstore sales, including online booksellers.
Click here to read his blog post
