The
scene wasn’t one you’d expect to see amid the short bookshelves of
the children’s section of the Newberg Public Library.
A mother clutching her child to her side to make way for a stampede
of adults focused on what lies beyond — a back room full of books
for sale, used and cheap.
“You might have to watch it,” Newberg librarian Leah Griffith,
standing sentry near the doorway, told the bewildered mother. “It’s
the start of the Newberg Library Friends book sale.”
The scene seems too scripted to be real, but it was. The stream of
eclectic book buyers, many with boxes or totes at the ready for
piling in books, began queuing up shortly before 4 p.m. Thursday,
the opening of the three-day sale that ends at 2:45 p.m. today
(Saturday), as they have for every book sale since organizers can
remember.
Volunteers with the Newberg Library Friends, who put on a book sale
three times a year, know before the doors open how the events will
unfold: The book buyers, who have paid a $5 annual fee for the
advantage of being the first to see the collection (it’s open to the
public from 5:30 p.m. on), pour into the room and zero in on
sections of their specialty, be it business books or romance novels
or religious reading, and within minutes they have stacks of books
to buy for 50 cents to a dollar.
Despite the buyers acting like they’d stumbled into an untouched
Egyptian tomb, the library sees the book sale as a win-win-win
situation. While buyers pay pennies on the dollar to furnish
personal libraries or stock book-selling operations, the library
wins two ways.
It gets first dibs on donated books. Griffith figured that of
upwards of 8,000 items added to the library’s collection each year,
2,000 to 3,000 of the them come from donations. Leftovers go to the
book sale. Griffith said each of the three sales generates $1,500 to
$2,000, and that an ongoing book sale in the lobby makes as much as
the sales combined.
Those funds make library patrons the third winners of the book
sale. In addition to occasionally funding such things as furniture
or computers, the revenue supports all activity programs, from
summer readings to movies to Book Buds.
“We couldn’t do it without them,” Griffith said. “We really value
our Library Friends.”
Bonnie Arbogast, a Library Friend since about 1982 who works the
till for book sale, has long enjoyed a front-row seat to the
book-buying melee. She said she has seen people buy three or four
boxes of books at a time, some who resell them but others who simply
like books.
“You don’t have the nerve to say, ‘What in the world are you going
to do with all those books?’” she said. “Wouldn’t want to stop a
sale.”
Not that all book-buyers would give her an answer. From the melody
of book-buyers there Thursday, it seemed the more serious the buyer
the more guarded they were of their practices.
Two obviously dedicated buyers had driven from Portland to be first
in line. One had on her cell phone an attachment that scanned bar
codes and within seconds retrieved listing prices on Amazon.com, a
virtual community of on-line book buyers and sellers. These two went
so far as to refuse to give their names. They’d rather their trade
attract as little competition as possible.
Others were more open. Newberg residents Pauline Barr and Cherie
Druery have for three years requested time off from their jobs at
Nap’s Thriftway, to attend the members-only book sale.
Barr said she buys to read but more for her side business selling
books on-line. “I always look for the more absurd and hard to find,”
she said.
Druery said she buys to add to her pile of books to read, which she
estimated at 400 books. “You can never have enough books, especially
at these prices,” she said.
Newberg resident Judi Moran said she specializes in selling books
about Christianity on the Internet. While business mandates she turn
a profit, she also sees her buying and selling as a quasi ministry,
a way of spreading the word. Best score? She bought a book for 50
cents and sold it to someone in Japan for $200.
Dundee resident Lee Nash, a former GFU history professor and
longtime part-time book seller, said selling books in a catalog has
become less profitable since the rise of the Internet. It’s also
saturated the market with sellers who don’t know how to accurately
describe the condition of their books.
“It’s a little less professional now,” he said. On the other hand,
he added, the buyer’s market has never been better; titles once
considered a hard-find are now a few clicks away.
Newberg resident Bob Langhorst, who works for a company buying
out-of-print textbooks to sell to colleges, pulls double-duty,
plucking other profitable titles for a side business. He said he and
his wife average $30,000 to $40,000 per year.
Knowing which books will turn a profit isn’t a skill you just pick
up, though. In the science fiction section Thursday was a first
American edition of “The Silmarillion” by J.R.R. Tolkien, author of
the “Lord of the Rings” trilogy. Price tag: 50 cents.
The closed-lipped woman with the cell phone connected to Amazon.com
seemed to be letting down her guard as she overheard others sharing
their stories. Will you scan this with your phone?
Says Amazon.com: 49 cents. |
