The Secondhand Book Scene Sure Has Changed

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I know I don’t get out much, but I feel like the entire secondhand/used book market has shifted, pretty quickly, and I didn’t get the memo until now. I was aware the traditional brick-and-mortar shop housing inventory of former mass printings or collectibles was definitely in decline. But the last time I went to a thrift store, I noticed the majority of the books on offer were discarded celebrity/political memoirs, children’s titles so outdated they’re now considered offensive, and a million varieties of who-dun-its with cookie-cutter trope characters and interchangeable plots.

A few months later, I went to the biggest Friends of the Library book sale in the area, and was rather disappointed. I did find a few gems, by my standards (older editions by favorite authors I hadn’t read yet, and a couple new graphic novels for Muffin); but 95% of the fiction/DVDs/kids’ stuff, I/we had either already read/watched, or have no interest in. And the lack of more recent titles was just shocking to me. Haven’t people read anything published in 2021-22 that they didn’t gel with and would have given to, say, a used book warehouse?

I don’t spend a lot of time browsing the internet these days (now that I’m well over 40 and my free time feels much more limited), but I have been around enough to get an impression of online used book selling. And it…isn’t good.

Ebay and Mercari are crazy, with people bidding through the roof for subscription box special editions of fantasy romance titles that didn’t even make the bestseller lists. Chain stores like Books A Million and Half Price Books are offering tons of yesterday’s genre fic hits with shipping deals that could cost less than the gas to the nearest library. In the vein of Book of the Month club, there are now services that mail you a bundle of read-once copies from all the genres.

When did the secondhand scene become so…saturated? Weren’t we all being told just 20 years ago that digital editions of everything would put used bookstores out of business? These same thrift shops and charities that are literally unloading piles and piles of inventory onto Amazon, just to clear out their storage space?

The other thing I’m noticing is that the influencers of BookTube and BookTok and Bookstagram seem to be driving a lot of impulse sales for the authors and genres and subjects we all “can’t live without.” Many bookworms will create a whole year’s TBR this way…and then by the time we finally get around to reading these now-not-so-hot releases, we’re…underwhelmed. Because the painful memory of paying $21.99 for a new publication is still fresh, though, we hurry to recoup some of our losses by listing…bunches of gently used hardcovers on Amazon and the like, and…this means we end up contributing to the problem?

I don’t know that I have any answers or even thoughts on how to change this multi-layered complex situation. As an author myself, I kind of want my books to keep getting passed from owner to owner, being discovered and enjoyed by more and more people. As a reader, however, I’m…bored, and…tired.

And, at the moment, at least, there doesn’t seem to be a solution in sight.