Doesn’t it bug you when you go to a library sale and there isn’t a single decent book? It’s obvious when there are thousands of books and nothing but crud, someone has cherry-picked the donations. It’s getting more and more common these days for Friends of the Library groups to skim the cream and sell their best donated books online.
FOLs aren’t the only ones, regular charities are getting into the act too. There’s a well-known book donation outlet in Baltimore called The Book Thing, which accepts book donations and gives away the books every weekend. But it turns out they don’t give away all the books, they’re skimming the best ones.
Book Thing operator Russel Wattenberg was criticized in the newspaper today for selling lots of donations on ABE.com and Amazon. He also consigns some books to auctioneers, the Baltimore Sun said.
But booksellers insist that Wattenberg should be more up front about the growing number of books he creams from donations, how much money he is getting for them online, and how that money is being spent at The Book Thing, a charity that has received grants from local entities such as the Open Society Institute, the Abell Foundation and Kiwanis.
Charities (and other businesses) have the right to run things as they see fit, as long as they’re not breaking the law. But I think they should make it clear that some of the donations aren’t given away, as most people seem to think.
In the short term, yes, cherry-picking provides more income for the FOL or charity. But what about the long term? If booksellers and collectors can’t find decent books at these sales, they’ll quit attending. And I think that could mean far less income for the FOL or charity in the long run.
What do you think?
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16 Comments
I am a bookseller living near Baltimore and I support the bookthing fully. Russel Wattenberg does a fantastic thing for Baltimore and he is certainly not getting rich for his troubles.
The bookthing gives away thousands of books each weekend. I have personally walked out with 40 mass markets in a single day, which I either add to my personal collection or read and re-donate.
If they sell a few first editions to pay the mortgage and electricity bill thats fine with me.
FOLs can probably get more money by letting just one dealer cherry pick. I am not sure there is a long run loss if this happens and the dealers don’t come anymore. Casual buyers will continue to come and buyer the less valuable books.
The sales will be more pleasant because of less rude bahavior. So even if there is a lower bottom line, the FOL’s still might be happier having the cream skimmed.
Dealers may need to find new and creative places to buy books.
I support FOLs and other charities selling online. Why should they sell everything at less than market rates and let other people make the money? I agree Book Thing should be able to sell what they can to help support their project to give away many thousands of books, and I double agree that if ill-mannered dealers no longer find the thrifts worth their time, the world is a better place.
It is such a waste. People generously donate to the library in good faith, thinking their valuable books will profit the library and be a blessing to the whole community.
Well, each book will provide the library with something like 50 cents (or 2 bucks if they are lucky). Half of them are not even sold at all.
Why is my local library too stupid to cherry pick? I get very upset when I see them selling off valuable books for $5 a bag to some dealers who will make something like $100 a bag (or $100 on a single book in that bag if there’s a good one in the lot).
I include myself in “those dealers”, because I am one myself.
Thousands and thousands of dollars are lost that could have been used to support the libraries if only they could figure out how to sell their donated books correctly.
It is a scandal how libraries squander away all the valuable donations for mere pennies, just because they refuse to embrace 21st century oneline sales technology.
I am all for the cherry picking. The library owes it to the donors and the whole community to use our donations more wisely.
I am a seller myself, so honestly I don’t know what I would do if the FOL booksales went away. But that doesn’t make them right.
Every time I sell a $100 book I got from a library sale for a few pennies, I cannot help the feeling that this is NOT in the donors best interest for ME to make the profit and the library receiving $5 for the bag.
The FOL can embrace technology. If not, what is wrong with others doing so? For those that “feel” bad about the high profit that results, there is nothing stopping you from donating back some of your profit to the libray that sold you the books.
I don’t agree that it is necessarily all profit for FOL to cherry pick. As we know, there are other, sometimes hidden, costs involved, which burden the system.
Legally, however, non-profit organization should disclose any profit-making activities in a timely and judicious manner.
For any dealer who “feels bad” over making a profit from a FOL booksale, have you ever considered how much less profit a library or charitable organization might net if dealers weren’t there searching for good books to buy? Dealers usually spend a lot more at FOL sales than the general public, and every item bought is not going to be a gem. A lot of those items purchased by dealers, especially at the FOL sales, get redonated to libraries, sometimes the same library from whence it came, to charities, etc. Every dealer isn’t making worlds of money off of each book purchased. Many booksellers have a very thin margin of profit and still donate unwanted books back to charitable sources.
Plus, it isn’t always that libraries aren’t into technology. They sometimes just don’t have the time to list more valuable items online (someone has to pay their salary at work to do that and libraries don’t have endless federal funding to serve every need). Think of it this way. Why would they hold FOL sales if they didn’t make any profit? So let’s say a dealer gets one $100 sale from a $5 bag of books? That’s one sale for one dealer. The library has tons of books available for sale to many people. Chances are they are making as much profit from the entire sale, selling higher volume at cheaper prices, than several dealers who happen to find “the good finds” there for a cheaper price.
A lot of library sales I go to are delighted to see dealers come in (although there are always a few disgruntled volunteers who think you shouldn’t sell books for a profit and, then too, nobody likes the pushy rude dealers, but they’re not a huge problem in my area). These libraries know that the more dealers attending the FOL sales, the more money they’re going to make for their library in question. At one mid-sized library sale, not even a huge sale, one of the employees, rather than a volunteer,told me the library made close to $35,000 in a very short time due to all the dealers showing up and buying a lot of “finds” for $1 to $5 each. Do you think he cared someone may net $100 for a $1 book? Probably not, especially considering a lot of those $1 books won’t net $100 or $10 or $2 at times. The library still gets the proceeds from the FOL sale, regardless.
On the other hand, I’m all for any charitable organization listing any book they want anywhere for sale, online or otherwise. Why shouldn’t they net profits as well when they can? However, I do think they should openly state that the buyer’s purchase will help support the charity. Actually, that type of disclosure might even increase their online sales.
I have seen many FOLs start to use technology after realizing that there are books that can sell for a LOT more than at their sales. It doesn’t take too long to realize though, that there aren’t too many ‘Internet book selling millionaires’. Book selling is VERY hard work and VERY time consuming. For all the work I end up with about a 25% bottom line net profit. My guess is that most that try will realize that it’s just a lot easier and probably nearly as profitable to just have regular book sales the way they always have.
I think it is more a time issue for FOL’s. As we all know, TIME is a huge factor in listing, boxing etc. books. Volunteers to do that? I think they would much rather man a desk or work at a sale, who wants to volunteer and be stuck in what would be to close to a “job”!!
Plus if anyone has gone to the “special tables” at sales, we know must of those items are not special, just old and pricey! It takes a lot of knowledge to list on-line.
So if we are all part of the cog in the wheel, everyone gets something as the wheel goes round and it works!
In San Francisco it seems that the library picks off some books and sells them at their own used book store in the main library for pretty hefty prices. I have no problem with that. If they are smart enough to realize they can do it and can actually make a profit to spend on the library then more power to them. But as someone else pointed out used book selling is hard work and time consuming and I think eventually the library will figure out that the amount they make from all the time and money they put into it won’t stand up when budget cutting time comes around. The little extra money they make surely doesn’t pay the wages of even a single staff person doing this job not to mention the staff person who has to be in the book store. Even though the idea looks good “on paper” it really doesn’t profit the library. Eventually, they will probably give up doing it.
I have to reply to one of the first posts :
“to some dealers who will make something like $100 a bag (or $100 on a single book in that bag if there’s a good one in the lot).”
Obviously this is not someone who has invested in bookselling as a livelihood. I am a brick and mortar used bookstore that has a large monetary investment in my building, and the costs of doing business in my state (NY). I make around 5% from the books I sell. Not enough to live on, obviously, but I am paddling as fast as I can just to stay in the water!
Needless to say, it bothers me to see non-profits get into the act. They get their inventory for free. They compete against those of us who are true businesses with what I term unfair labor practices (they can have volunteers, and we can’t. They don’t have to pay the same costs of doing business FROM THE PROFITS of what they make…instead they cover their costs from taxpayer monies. In essence “I” am supporting my competion! And as a taxpayer, this is not helping the tax base that I also support otherwise.
Even those that are profit making non-profits (a strange beast indeed), often get all sorts of tax breaks we just plain don’t get.
So, before you make that statement “make $100.00 from a $1.00 book,” remember there is more to that $1.00 book than a dollar. How about the gas to “GET” to the sale? For me it is sometimes three hours one way. Then I have to clean and price and store these books (costs of doing business). One book I sold, thank you Lord!, for 100.00 had a substantial and hefty fee from Amazon, a monthly fee for three and a half years for my inventory monthly listing (and this is the sort of thing I keep listed and regularly look up to competitively price as more and more enter the market), and finally, a loss in upgrading shipping (they select standard, but would freak if it took 6 weeks to get there), covering the cost of insuring it online, etc. For that $100.00 I actually got around $30.00 (maybe…). Ten hours or more later.
Those dealers are working their duffs off to make what a ‘consultant’ in any other profession (including the poster?) make in around a half hour (my massage therapist makes this five times a day (and I am lucky to get an order like this twice a month!).
The rest of the time, the work I do garners me $2.00 – $5.00 per order, and six or eight orders a day (remember I also run a real store with all the time that takes!).
Just a tho’t. And I agree, bookselling online has peaked. Let’s hope there is a substantial drop off from loss of interest (but I doubt it). I work around 50 hours a week. Not much time for anything else. And NOT A HOBBY!
Debbie K.
I’ve been to The Book Thing, and Wattenberg’s behavior tipped off the scam right away. My wife spotted some interesting books and went to look at them, at which time he screamed at her, “GET AWAY FROM THOSE BOOKS! THEY HAVEN’T BEEN PROCESSED YET!” It wasn’t difficult to spot a computer with an Amazon page on the screen. I thought, what an intelligent setup. Have people bring the books to you so you can sell the good ones, and render the rest unsalable, all the while operating under a grant. You get free money on top of free books to sell. I’ve often thought I should move to another city and start one up myself.
RUSSELL WATTENBERG HAS BEEN SKIMMING THE BEST BOOKS FOR A LONG LONG TIME
I used to volunteer at the Book Thing in its earliest stages, and he admitted to me then that he was skimming the best. In fact, he would go crazy if someone even looked at books that weren’t yet looked over by him. Furthermore, before he moved to his present location I have been inside his apartment, and it was FILLED to the brim with STACKS of huge volumes of what looked to be valuable books. Large art books, etc. Now, I’m not saying that Russell is a scam artist, but what he does is deceptive, making people believe that it is a charity. Yep, its a charity! LOL If you want free books, I suggest you go to a library–you can read all you want, then you return them. Better than supporting Mr. Wattenberg. I think Mr. Wattenberg originally had good intentions, but $$$$$$$$$$$ are now dancing in his head. And if anyone thinks he doesn’t have stockpiles of valuable books put aside, then they are quite naive. He says he only gets under $12,000 salary? What man of his age would continually work for that salary? People need to think about this whole thing.
What endeared this guy so much to me was his behavior at the annual Smith College book sale. During the final hours, it’s all you can bag for $5. Wattenberg would receive free any unsold books. He came in with sheets that he threw over some tables, effectively locking out everyone else from those books. Then his volunteers would go around and gather more books, and put them under the sheets. The whole thing is just wrong.
If you are only making 5 percent, you might want to read the e-myth. It will help you a lot.
If you happen to spend some time with Russell Wattenberg you will find this man frequently intoxicated and brutally aggressive. Not once has he shocked visitors and families with children by shouting at guests, often using obscene language, because they took “too many books” or used cell phones while in the store.