Amazon replaces local book sale
This is progress not. The King County Library System in the Seattle area has killed off its Real World semiannual book sale of 80,000 unwanted books–and replaced it with an online sale by Amazon.com. Talk about stupidity. The Seattle Times says:
Such traditions as people camped out at the doors at 6 a.m. in Kirkland, the bags of books for a few bucks and the orgy of book buying are giving way to the World Wide Web and the lure of the virtual marketplace….Library officials say they will raise more money with less effort but acknowledge it will make the books more expensive and the shopping experience a little less memorable.
“Whereas we loved the book sale, it has become a difficult thing to sustain because of the sheer volume of books and the amount of time it took to hold the sales,” said library spokeswoman Marsha Iverson.
The Kirkland sale, usually held in October, is the first to be canceled. The final sale was held last spring in Kent. The cancellation does not affect local sales of donated books put on by supporters of individual libraries.
From another city, a Friends of the Library booster writes:
I think it’s a serious mistake–but perhaps the branches will now profit by holding their own book sales. For us, in our community, the book sale is the engine that drives Friends membership, Friends activities, Friends publicity, and Friends leadership recruitment. I expect the system-wide Friends will falter as a result, but perhaps the smaller more local groups will have a chance to flourish.
Reading the quotes, it becomes clear that they should have been recruiting volunteer workers and leadership long before this … (Easier said than done, but essential.)
I agree with you. It’s a shame.
In a TeleRead context, a question arises: “Well, what happens when e-books arrive–will people still get together in local local libraries to hold sales?” The answer is a decided yes.
First, paper books aren’t going away immediately.
Second, how about library supporters getting together to sell used e-book reading hardware (or collections of books on memory chips, at least if licensing arrangements allow)?
What’s more, library groups could redirect their efforts toward organizing book clubs and authors’ reading and other local events, with interested library users receiving notification via targeted e-mailings based on their interests.
One way or another, however, local library events matter, and one hopes that the King County system will learn from the richly deserved negative PR.
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