Q&A: How much do textbook prices increase in August?

QUESTION: You’ve mentioned that prices increase in August after the summer lull. Can you estimate how much?

ANSWER: That’s a hard question, but I’ll mention two anecdotes that illustrate how prices rise at the end of the summer.

In May of 2004 I got an incredibly good deal on two cases of introductory sociology textbooks. They were brand new, published only a year earlier. I got about 50 of them for only $1 apiece.

Freshman Sociology books don’t hold their value well because they’re so common, but since these were so new, I figured it was a great deal.

When I got home and looked up the price on Amazon Marketplace, I couldn’t believe it — they were going for $5. So I listed them at about $20. But none of them sold. After a few weeks I lowered my price to $5 and sold a few of them, but very rarely did any sell.

Finally, my Sociology books started selling in early August, and by mid-August I was selling three or four of those books a day for $50 apiece. I was able to raise the price by checking the competition every day. After they started selling, I raised my price to at least $10 above the lowest price on Marketplace. Of course with hindsight , it was a mistake to sell any at $5. The price rose tenfold on that book within a few weeks.

Here’s another example that doesn’t depend on textbook sales, and illustrates the August tide lifts all boats. Last year, in early July 2005, we moved to a house. Before we bought the house, we lived in an apartment, and all my books were in Public Storage units. I was able to consolidate all my inventory into the basement of my house, which was great — but everything got disorganized for a couple of months, so I had to take most of my inventory offline until I got unpacked and reorganized.

I was back online in September/October of last year. And when I relisted my books, I was surprised to see that prices had literally doubled on many of my nonfiction books. For a minority of my stock, maybe one in five books, the price went down during those several weeks of July/August/September.

Those two stories illustrate how prices rise, but I don’t think there’s any way to precisely predict it, or to know what will happen with each book. I wouldn’t go out on a limb and say, “most books go up 50 percent after the summer.” There’s just so many variables, and we don’t have a crystal ball to know what the supply and demand is going to be. With textbooks, it just depends on how many professors assign the book, and how well the college bookstores meet new/used demand from students. For regular consumer fiction/nonfiction it’s a little more predictable — the higher the book is on the bestseller lists (the more popular) the lower the price will go once the initial demand is met.

One thing is certainly true: If you sell a nonfiction book at the low price in early August, you’re leaving money on the table — because nearly everyone who sells a copy later in August is going to get a higher price. Probably a much higher price.

Hey, maybe we should just all go on vacation every summer!

Related posts:

1. Q&A: How long should you wait before lowering prices on your used books at Amazon, Half.com, eBay, ABE.com, or Alibris?
2. Q&A: Is Amazon cycling my book listings?