More used books! (was Score!)

[k.camplate]

I've been hunting around locally trying to find cheap versions of Banks books. I've ordered Use of Weapons and Consider P for the mass market price and Player of Games for the quality paperback price but they couldn't order anything else.   <insert subliminal message> Also ordered one Bruce Sterling book, Crystal. <end s m>   Went with brother to downtown Philadelphia to see King Crimson last night. Quick review: 'sure plays a mean guitar.' We had time to kill before show so we walked to used bookstore. They had a nice SF section. Bought V V Fire on the Deep and a fantasy book. Now up to 5 books waiting in the queue. I can read faster but I like to feel the words.   So in the last two days I've been to six bookstores. After the third the <ding> went off in my head. Only one had a computer/inventory list. So let us talk about this, I have some questions.   1) I was thinking of offering a computer to them in exchange for their inventory list oh once a week and a small percentage of sales. I would set it up, track all books by publisher, author, genre, when it was brought in, (anything else?). Hopefully I could work off of the ISDN and bar codes but would print up bar codes for those books without. Wouldn't stick the barcodes on the books, would use paper clips. I hope there are database programs geared towards this so I wouldn't have to do alllll the work.   2) Then I could set up a web site and offer the books for sale. I get an email asking for a book, I'd gather the e-mails and send a hold list to the bookstore(s) once a day, then the next day I'd buy the books and send them out.   3) The big thing would be to make it regional, get all the local, 200km, bookstores set up this way.   4) After my second million I'd have computers in all the bookstores nation wide. The inventory list would be updated each night, the individual stores would receive an e-mail each morning telling them what books to pick and pack, they'd be doing all the work by now. You could bring your used books into a local place and get credit to buy books from any store in the system.   5) On the flip side do you think computers+used books = bad idea? Would you rather go to bookstores on you own looking for that rare gem? Would the bookstore quickly become a hollow picked-over shell with dozens of books by Piers Anthony and nothing else? The big thing for them is that these places are an exchange, they give you 1/4 a price for a book you bring in and sell it for 1/2 price. If the locals have nothing to buy it could collapse very fast. But then again these places are 3/4 romance novels.   6) Nothing more, this is my favorite number.   Kevin Tarr Trump high, lead low