CJB Contra Corporate Thrift Store, Round 3

Excerpt from novelist William Gibson's exemplary essay, "My Obsession":

"When I was a young man, traversing the '70s in whatever post-hippie, pre-slacker mode I could manage, I made a substantial part of my living, such as it was, in a myriad of minuscule supply-and-demand gaps that have now largely closed. I was what antique dealers call a 'picker,' a semi-savvy haunter of Salvation Army thrift shops, from which I would extract objects of obscure desire that I knew were up-marketable to specialist dealers, who sold in turn to collectors. To this day I am often unable to resist a professionally quick, carefully dispassionate scan over the contents of any thrift shop, though I almost never buy anything there. Mainly because the cut-rate treasures, the 'scores' of legend, are long gone. The market has been rationalized."

In other words, the knowledge I acquired first-hand from Gavin, and from the better part of a decade behind the Book & Comic Emporium buying counter, is now available to anyone with an Internet connection, cell phone, or wireless handheld barcode scanner. I'm not reflexively negative about this; no one is entitled to cheap books in perpetuity, and anyone whose business model simply consists of showing up at the local thrift store every morning is running a hobby business, not a real business.

And yet...

William Hoffer, a legendary Vancouver antiquarian bookseller whose crankiness far outweighs my own, once explained our trade this way: you're not paying for the book (ink, paper, binding, etc.), but the ability to walk in and find it on the shelf.

Why is a mediocre mass market paperback like John Grisham's The Client $4.95 in my shop, and $1.00 at the Salvation Army? Well, because I paid 40% of my retail price for it, instead of receiving it as a donation, and because my copy isn't spined and dog-eared, and because all the books in my shop are neatly arranged in alphabetical order, and because I stock nearly all of Grisham's books, not just that single title, and because if I should somehow be out of it when you come in I'll find you a copy in a week or two at no additional charge, and because, if you ask, the staff and I will recommend other, better, books that you might enjoy more, and because, assuming you do buy a book from me and don't read it in the bath, I'll offer you trade or cash when you bring it back. The Salvation Army will just take your dollar and send you on your way.

Corporate Thrift Store now charges as much as I do for pocket books. Apparently their owners and managers got William Gibson's memo about the rationalized playing field. So their copy of The Client costs the same as mine, but with none of the value-added services.

I once saw six Easton Press hardbacks in Corporate Thrift Store, in the locked "collectables" showcase, priced $49.99 apiece. Coincidentally, I had around 100 Eastons in the shop at that point, for which I had paid, on average, $25 apiece, and priced $34.95-$49.95.

Where had CTS' Eastons come from? Probably from someone who wanted to help out Big Brothers, or the Canadian Diabetes Association, and had donated their Eastons to them out of good will, not realizing that their favorite charity would receive cents on the retail dollar, courtesy the "partnership agreement" with CTS, while CTS' private owners hoovered up the bulk of profits.

Had the Eastons' owner really wanted to help charity, they would have called me -- or Don Stewart at MacLeod's Books, or Charles Purpora, or any one of a number of other reputable local dealers -- who would have paid them fairly for their books, instead of consigning them to CTS' greedy maw. The charity would then have received the real extent of the owner's extraordinary generosity, instead of pennies.

"What's your problem with CTS, anyway?"

I'm not complaining about how I can't find good stuff at CTS any more. I'm complaining that CTS misrepresents its business model to the public to its own advantage, treats its "partners" like shit, and competes with legitimate charities for the same finite supply of merchandise.
- posted by cjb @ 10:33 PM