Monday, January 06, 2014

The Economics of Used Books


Some thoughts, here, care of Eureka Books.

From the piece...

The shop in question, which I’ll call Ye Olde Bookshoppe, had been open just over seven years at the time of the appraisal. There were two partners. When Peter visited, the store had 45,000 titles in stock, about evenly divided between hardcovers and paperbacks. What follows are extracts from the analysis section of the final appraisal.

Start Up
The partners had been involved in bookselling in various forms for ten years. Together, they pooled $5000 in cash, plus 15,000 books acquired at an average of $1 per and 10,000 books acquired for $2,000. “20 cents each!!!” writes Peter. So 25,000 starting books acquired for $17,000, mostly at garage and estate sales. Their average retail price was $7.

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