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Posted on 10-9-2004
By The Book
Critics said the web would destroy small booksellers, but the internet has
actually given them a new lease of life, says Richard Adams
Thursday September 9, 2004, The Guardian
The London Review Bookshop in Bloomsbury
It wasn't meant to be like this. The internet was supposed to bid farewell
to the need for buying books in shops. When the dotcom bubble was at its
peak, web gurus claimed sites such as Amazon would undercut and undermine
traditional bookstores, and that ebooks would eventually do away with
"dead tree" media altogether.
But what no one saw coming was that the internet would, in fact, provide a
lifeline for possibly the least fashionable and most technologically
backward part of the marketplace: old books.
While shops selling the latest Harry Potter or Tom Clancy novel have had
to grapple with competition from online upstarts offering deep discounts
and convenient delivery, the fusty world of second-hand bookselling has
increasingly embraced the net not just to compete, but also to expand its
horizons.
Ralph Robinson exemplifies the internet's ability to breathe new life into
the second-hand book market. A teacher in St Margaret's Hope, on the
Orkney Islands, Robinson has found that the isolation of a remote Scottish
archipelago is no barrier to establishing a business. He specialises in
selling the works of Orkney authors such as the poet George Mackay Brown
and writer Eric Linklater, but also trades in more general works.
"If you have quality books, then people will buy them from all over the
world, no matter where you are based," says Robinson, who started as a
collector of first editions.
Although he has his own website, much of his business comes through two of
the big players in the second-hand book world: the leading website
Abebooks, and Amazon's used book offshoot.
"My favourite site is Abebooks, because it tends to have better quality
books for sale," says Robinson.
Based in Canada and originally called the Advanced Book Exchange, Abebooks
was started in the web's pioneer days by Keith and Cathy Waters, a husband
and wife team. Since it was formed in 1996, the company has remained
privately owned and has taken over its European rival, JustBooks, to help
give it a strong base on this side of the Atlantic.
The business model is simple: second-hand bookshop owners and dealers
upload their catalogue to Abebooks' database for a monthly fee, up to $65
for listing 20,000 books. In addition, the company charges a commission of
8% on every purchase made through its website.
Abebooks now carries more than 2,000 UK-based second-hand booksellers and
a total of 12,000 independent booksellers across 45 countries. They claim
there are more than 55m books on sale at any one time.
The company sells a daily average of 20,000 books, with around 4m visitors
combing through the site each month and an additional 30,000 to 50,000 new
entries loaded on to the database every day.
The major rival to Abebooks is Amazon's suite of sites, which offers
customers used and second-hand books alongside searches for new titles on
Amazon's main retail effort. They also allow for specialist second-hand
searches.
Amazon offers unlimited catalogue listings for up to $47 per month, but a
stiffer 15% commission on each sale. It claims to have more than 20,000
individual booksellers, and an estimated 70m used books in its catalogues
- although the high number of duplicates makes it hard to judge an
accurate figure.
Behind Amazon and Abebooks there are a gaggle of rivals, some of which
specialise in rare or antiquarian books. The biggest of the chasing pack
is Alibris, a US-based firm, which boasts a slick website with more than
10,000 participating dealers and 35m books. It also carries films and
music but does not charge a monthly listing fee. Instead, there is a
one-off $50 joining fee and a hefty 20% commission.
While the sites are in competition with each other, in practice most
second-hand booksellers sign up to more than one site. Robinson says he
used to use Alibris but gave up because the site's insistence on using
particular courier firms to send orders via London made it impractical.
Bookseller Stuart Manley lists his shop's books on a variety of sites,
including Abebooks, Amazon and Alibris. He is the proprietor of the
picturesque Barter Books, which is based in an old Victorian railway
station in Alnwick, Northumberland. Manley also lists his stock on smaller
sites such as UK Bookworld, a UK-only site notable for charging a modest
annual fee instead of commission; TomFolio, a cooperative-owned site
selling shares for $500, which charges $45 a month for listing 20,000
titles; and Choose Books, with no listing fees and variable commissions as
low as 5%.
Manley has been running the bookshop since 1991, and was one of the first
to start using the internet when in 1995 he set up the shop's first
website. He has witnessed the rapid expansion of second-hand book sales
over the web.
"Four years ago, there were 10,000 dealers on the net worldwide. Now
there's around 30,000. The bulk of the new arrivals are spare bedroom
operators, people doing it as a sideline," he says.
Sheer weight of numbers is making it harder for new outfits to survive, he
says. "There are indications that the 'golden age' on the internet is over
- there are so many sellers now that individual booksellers are feeling
it."
According to feedback from other online sellers, competition from the new
entrants has meant lower prices and diminishing sales. "We have flattened
out," Manley admits.
Manley says that over the past two years, Barter Books' own site is its
leading sales generator, although there are suggestions that customers use
sites such as Abebooks to locate books they want, and then order them
separately through the shop's website at slightly lower prices. Next in
terms of sales value comes Abebooks, followed by Amazon (including .com
and .co.uk versions), and Alibris.
To get an idea of the relative popularity of the various sites, for every
pound in sales at Barter Books generated by Alibris, the shop receives
£2.70 in orders from the two Amazon sites, £5 from Abebooks, and nearly £9
from the shop's own website.
The size and usefulness of the three main sites becomes apparent when
comparison shopping. A search for a copy of Geoff Dyer's entertaining
account of DH Lawrence, Out Of Sheer Rage, finds 120 copies available on
Alibris. Its prices started at £1.60 for a used paperback from a
bookseller in Massachusetts. That seller also had the book listed for the
same price on Abebooks, but was undercut by a £1 offer from a UK-based
book shop. Abebooks boasted 165 copies for sale, way ahead of
Amazon.co.uk's 32 copies, while Amazon's lowest price was £1.05.
While the difference does not sound like much, it is obvious when
scrolling through the listings that Abebooks and Amazon have more UK-based
booksellers than Alibris. The problem with Amazon, in this case, was that
it had separate listings for the four different editions of Dyer's work.
Alibris and Abebooks, on the other hand, collate all editions - a far less
taxing proposition.
When looking for something more exotic, it becomes apparent that Abebooks'
listings are superior to rivals. There has been only one recent English
translation of the neglected Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard's book of
short stories, The Voice Imitator. While Alibris and Amazon listed eight
copies each, Abebooks nearly doubled that with 14.
While there are a substantial number of "spare bedroom operators",
professional booksellers in the main seem to use these services to help
supplement their profits. Unlike Robinson, the majority of Barter Books'
trade is conventional traffic through the door. Only about a fifth of the
shop's turnover comes from internet sales. Even so, web sales require the
attention of two full-time staff to service orders and maintain the
various online catalogues.
They might not be ditching the traditional shop, but the suggestion that
booksellers would crumble under the challenge of the internet has been
utterly refuted.
Instead of becoming a footnote in bookselling history, the industry has
used the web to secure its future. And the resulting competition between
the main players means that, right now at least, the second-hand book
field really is a buyer's market.
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