didn't Skinner get pigeons to do this back in the 60's?

Thank god for the old books without barcodes

Things were so much better when you'd get stuck with a bunch of overpriced crap.

The scanner assholes should be banned from the friends booksale.

Made it more efficient and allowed people to make a living while at the same time reducing prices for consumers?

Rotten beat me to it.

That seems like a good way to scare off the buyers who just want to find some cheap books and support the library. Can the scanner douches buy enough to make up for losing the majority of customers?

Aw, come on. The recycling of books in one way or another is a good thing, not bad. 99% of the books at any used book sale are really destined for the recycle bin. Literally. The scanner types are saving books with some purpose from oblivion.

The scanners are annoying, though, so maybe they should be allowed only on the last day of an event or something.

I fail to see a downside to this. All it means in the long run is cheaper books.

@7 I think that is a reasonable solution. Let everyone get their shot at the pile, the scanners can take the scraps.

I fail to see a downside to this. All it means in the long run is cheaper books.

If he's looking at his screen after scanning then he's wasting time. Most just go by the beeps (you set the criteria for when it will beep).

I did lots of isbn lookups before scanners hit the scene (typing the numbers in manually) and back when good books were still plentiful. Those were the good old days. Now there are way too many scouts out and about and as a result fewer good books on the shelves. As an added bonus, the newer scouts seem ruder because there is more competition. Watching adults physically knock each over so that one of them can grab an entire shelf of books is saddening. And they won't necessarily buy all of those books they just fought over to grab, they'll scan them, and then leave the rejects behind in a messy pile.

It's called efficient marketplaces.

Don't you love being a serf?

@10, the downside is this: booksellers disappear. Your options for getting books online expand, but only at the expanse of local stores. Without local stores, you lose a vast amount of knowledge, which is in fact the very knowledge that makes some books valuable and some not. You reduce the entire world of publishing to pulp material, headed straight for the bin. There is institutional value in having sellers who know what the hell they're doing, not just waving a scanner around.

And one of the great benefits is that I can find an obscure title from a bookseller in Alabsma (yes there are some) and get it for a good price in a few days.

Don't be a douchebag, Constant. Wow, so now the ability to buy and sell used books moves from the jerky book nerds who've memorized the values of the rare books to the jerky cyber nerds who've got the tools to get the values of rare books. Quit over-romanticizing "the way things used to be"; if you want to write "get off my lawn, you darn kids" then just do so. So the people (jerks) who would compile a list of valuable books and bring that list and refer to it (or the idiot savants who would memorize such) are replaced (or more likely, are the same) by people who use mobile devices to do the exact same thing. Boo freaking hoo.

If you want to complain about something that technology does, complain about how trite blog posts are replacing true investigative journalism. Oh wait.

So all that really matters is lower prices? Welcome to Walmart.

@13 Eh, I have never found local bookstores all that interesting. I can go on Amazon and see a ton of reviews on most books. I don't need to go to a store and have a seller, often one with their own tastes and biases, telling me what to read. Instead I can get the opinions of others who have read the book and can even look at their profiles and other reviews to see what kinds of books they like and if their interests and preferences match up with mine. Its a massive explosion of knowledge.

But, bookstores will never fully go away, as there are plenty of people who for various reasons enjoy them, but there will be fewer of them and hopefully the massive book department stores like Borders will die a quick death.

@16 thanks, China!

I don't understand the gripe on these people. These folks working hard getting books to people who want them, which beats the dumpster. Steampunk in the highest sense I say! So much hate Seattle. Really, why care?

@19,

I've heard complaints from people who regularly go to that sale that the scanner people block entire aisles and refuse to move over so other people can get by, even when those other people want to access entire categories of books that the money grubbers aren't interested in.

@19 That's a good reason.

the trend at the last 2 sales is to train an group of latino day workers to scan for you. they're in there scanning items they can't read.

what was once the best thrift store/estate sale in the world is now reduced to a competition between art and commerce. & in the land of the free, commerce always wins.

it's one step away from fighting over metal scraps in a transfer station. pardon me if i don't look forward to capitalism's next innovation.

It sounds like the problem isn't the scanners themselves, but the boorish operators who act like assholes.

It should be easy enough to allow the scanners, so long as they are silent. And just eject anyone acting like an asshole, scanner or no scanner.

@23 FTW
my thoughts exactly

This whole topic is pretty interesting actually, it's all news to me and I find it pretty rad.

it is not only about the ones w/out ISBN's, they also grab a shit ton of marked in, defaced and otherwise pretty much worthless crap, 'cause they don't know what is good, nor where the market is on such items;

for them it is all about bulk, nothing more, they are a bane on book scouting , and are basically devaluing any good/knowledge about that trade, full stop.

IMHO they're performing a valuable service.

I buy books at library sales, thrift stores, etc. to sell online, but I don't use a scanner. Then again I'm not running a business, I just do it for fun. Any book I buy that turns out to be worthless I put up on BookMooch.

But you can't really call the people who use scanners "booksellers." Yes, they sell books in the physical sense. But they don't sell you the book in the way a bookstore clerk sells you a book. Or a used car salesman sells you a car. If you're buying a book online, you already knew about it. You searched for it specifically. Now you're just looking for the cheapest price. The seller doesn't have to do anything. Just click, ship it, done.

So I think THAT'S where this guy's shame is coming from. It's understandable. But it's still better than books ending up in the trashcan.