The Incidental Pleasures of Online Bookselling

For even the most casual online surfer, there's one thing that's become clear in recent years: you can't walk a virtual block online nowadays without tripping over a bookseller. They're everywhere: Ebay, Amazon, Alibris, Abe, all the new auction/BIN sites that keep mushrooming up like iOffer and Ebid.net. Small individual websites too, with shopping carts and inventory and the whole thing. What is it about online bookselling that has such a powerful attraction for so many?

Of course, compared to a brick and mortar store, the costs of vending second-hand books online are miniscule. This in all probability plays its part! Add to that the ready availability of stock, its easy storage and packing and the ready, if long-tail market for a wide range of vintage, unusual and obscure books, and perhaps the popularity of this way of bringing in a few bucks isn't so surprising. There's no great mystery to becoming an internet bookseller, the learning curve has a low initial gradient and the investment is minimal. There is a mystique, though...

How many of us would list, 'reading for a living' as our ideal job description? Selling books is probably as close as we're ever going to get. True, even an amateur 'store' owner is liable to have more stock than she's ever going to be able to read. But she can handle a book before sending it out, she can examine the beautiful bookplates, flick through the first and last chapters, inhale that used-book aroma, get a feel for the nature of the thing. For a true booklover, a book is a source of joy purely as an object, as well as in its role as a storehouse of knowledge and wisdom.

And the business is an education - both through the osmosis of knowledge from your stock, and the gradual accretion of knowledge about your stock.

That's an intellectual capital that can go on to earn for you for years to come - experience and education being two things 'they' can never take away.

The buyers themselves as well as the books can be a source of enjoyment. With the unusual tomes (and the downright strange ones) the bookseller can wonder and speculate about the reason for the purchase. Perhaps she'll come up with a hypothesis to explain it, or perhaps it's just random and inexplicable. And with some purchases, it just seems better not to speculate in the first place... Don't ask!

If bookselling is treated as purely a sideline and source of extra income, then it's a pleasant one indeed. Run at your own convenience, ramped up and cooled down for convenience' sake, a nice little earner for luxuries and treats, what could be better? As a full-time job it can be more iffy, though perhaps doable for someone with a natural affinity who's prepared to put the hours in. Either way, compared to a corporate gig, it's certainly a relaxed lifestyle, although with its share of hard work and attention to detail.

And of course for an introvert it's a dream: all social contact contained at one remove, from the other end of an internet connection! Unless one counts Post Office staff, of course... Let's not think about that.

There are downsides to this form of self-employment, however. For a start it's getting a little overcrowded. Every time you take note of a good little earner, a book that brought you - or someone else - a surprising amount of dosh, you can just bet a dozen or more others are doing exactly the same thing. And keeping their eyes peeled for their own copy. Pretty soon the market's flooded with every available copy and the price has hit the floor.

Still it's hard to deny the kick, the thrill of a sale - especially with a book you picked up for 20p and are selling for £15. Even after all the fees, that's nice sugar. If only they were all like that! But I'm pretty sure 90% of us have had the diametric opposite experience: the auction sale that barely covers cost price after fees. Or worse, the mistaken postage estimate that actually winds up costing you money.

Still, when I come to weigh up the pros and cons, I conclude that bookselling is a pretty good life, or hobby - nice work if you can get it. And you probably can!