used bookselling online is for people with second jobs and / or no mortgage. you will not get rich. sure, you will get terrific mark-up on selected titles but that will be balanced out by average or low prices or no sales on most of the other titles.

Amazon were actually a good help to me in the days when i was able to piggy-back onto their site via ABE. that lasted for about 6 months or so.

Alibris i was on for a while but their method of pick-up tied me for the whole day. UPS could never tell me when they would be able to arrive for collection on a given day. but i got good orders from them.

any of the other sites i’ve tried were pathetic on the sales side: Choosebooks, Antiqbooks etc.

my next move is to try & help other used book sellers in the marketing end. i’d enjoy that.

Also, it doesn’t sound hugely profitable even at it’s peak…

firstly “corrections & additions”. the council were going to “survey” local businesses, of which i was one. no other person working online, that i have spoken to, received a letter from the company that worked on behalf of the council, which in turn was acting on behalf of EU commercial water rulings.

it han’t got to the need to pay commercial water rates before i closed. however, who knows what way these “surveys” work out when the company is working on commission….

below is a brief account in the new & used book trade in Dublin from 1980 to 2007, both “click & brick” models.

CARRAIG BOOKS (and also NAUGHTONS in Dun Laoire) are probably the only two mid-priced, major-league used booksellers left in South Dublin. GREENES was a lost cause for the past long while, in regards to used books. i believe they did do very well in school books.

there are other used bookshops in the public & private arenas, like Cathach, de Burca & James Fenning but they are mainly aimed at the wealthy collector end of the market. at Carraig & Naughtons you can still get interesting and / or important books at fair prices.

i did actually once work in Carraig Books (1981/2) & then went on to Hodges Figgis bargain books section, the “cinderella” of the book trade that, like used books, gives the authors a second chance for an audience).

after 3 months in Hodges Figgis i then worked in St Ann’s Bookshop (which was the old APCK, revived in a much leaner form). i was manager at St Ann’s for 2 years & was generously allowed to experiment with other niche “cinderella” areas like Christian Feminism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Church History.

in 1984 i moved out to Blackrock, to help start & establish BOOKSTOP, in various different capacities. i stayed there 18 years, partly out of convenience. i have lived all my life in Blackrock for most of my 50 years.

while at Bookstop i championed nearly all the other “cinderellas”: poetry, religion, feminism, bargain books - as well as being the Irish buyer. bringing my SOS (Special Order Service) idea from St Ann’s i perservered establishing it at Bookstop. we sourced many hundred books each month. one customer even came from Ballinasloe for his special orders when he was in town.

after about 7 years, when i got tired of the brick wall response to some of my ideas & saw Sunday Trading rolling down the tracks, i decided to quit. that never happened.

i went back to Carraig Books and asked for my old job back. when i outlined my frustrations in Bookstop i was politely told that staff requirements at Carraig Books had shrunk, not expanded….

however, before i left, Sean offered me about 30 boxes of used theology books & a mailing list at a competitive price. i quickly snapped up the offer, bought an old word processor & started listing books. having spent circa 1,000 pounds on photo copying lists etc, i decided to buy a table top photo copier for 600 pounds.

i only had that photcopier a month when my older brother visited me from UK. he brought over a Mac 475 & told me to go online. that started my online used bookselling 15 years ago, before there was an ISP in Ireland. i used Compuserve.

i have since made multiple upgrades on Macs & catalogued over 36,000 books. i didn’t sell that amount, i may add. used book dealers expect to sell between 10 & 25% of their total stock…. i also built up an opt-in semi-private free monthly mailing list of 2,250 subscribers for used theology. most subscribers lived in USA & UK.

winds of change came: turnover dropped from a high 20K to circa 14K last year. then my water rates saga started last december. so i closed down my business, sensing legal trouble ahead. that was a correct move.

i had a few massive e-mail catalogue lists to subscribers in Jan/Feb this year, prior to close down. then i swapped many boxes with dealers for much fewer collectibles. i donated to jumble sales / missions circa 50 boxes of good to average books. this left me with a mere 800 titles…

in june this year i purchased the first in the 3G range of laptop modems. i am now a suburban road warrior working from a variety of desktop spaces & from the back seat of my Berlingo Multispace…i no longer work from home…

it’s been an interesting time.

- louis

Thesis displacement activity

Oh, I haven’t come across that book on reading irish histories at all, so I’d be interested in hearing more about it when you get through it.

i was out there at lunchtime and I picked up a VERY RARE programme for the Pope’s gig in the Phoenix Park. I’m going to scan it and put it up. Ok. It was in a charity shop, but that’s the kind of thing I’m talking about. where’s the diversity?