The public library sale, especially in major cities, has always been a competitive event. They are important inventory streams for most used booksellers who have an open book shop and for most book scouts. They get there early and when the doors open they turn off all appearances of civility and enter accumulation mode.
Now these sales are also the feeding grounds for the new breed of booksellers who sell primarily online and deal almost exclusively in books with ISBN numbers, that is books printed after 1966 or in many cases after 1974 when it became the worldwide standard.
Most of the books at these sales fall in this category.
Since the advent of online bookselling there have been many more booksellers descending on these library sales while the amount of books available remains pretty much the same. Couple that with the downward price spiral that has entrapped most used books and it is bound to get ugly.
Walter Brown exposes the dark side of these library sales in his op/ed piece at the Philadelphia Enquirer; A book sale – red in tooth and claw.
He went to a book sale to find a few good books but what he saw were a bunch of bibliomaniacs on the loose. “Most of us were there to buy a few used books – but then, there were the Others” is how he puts it.
Here are a few of his observations of the Others:
“Book sales can be mean. They are an unhealthy blend of Norman Rockwell and capitalism.”
“The vultures ravaged the tables.”
“They had roaming goons, too, minions separating the Hemingways from the Harlequins.”
One of the volunteers had to remind an “enraged dealer [that] he would have to leave if he didn’t calm down. “We have women and children present!” he said, even threatening to call the police.”
It just can’t be worth it.
This madness puts the libraries or the friends of the library who run these sales in a tough spot. These sales generate much needed revenue and the booksellers who show up are the ones who spend the most money and in many cases pay a premium so that they can get in the earliest. They are also the most unruly and the members of the community (the ones who use the library!) who show up looking to find some inexpensive books to read are subject to these sub-primal outbursts.
It might be time for the libraries to revisit the structure of the public library sale. There are numerous other sales channels that might be worth exploring. My fear is that we haven’t seen the worst of it. Something tragic is bound to happen if this keeps up.