California Investment Network


Recent Blog


Pitching Help Desk


Testimonials

"For those of you that are asking yourself whether this site is real, the answer is yes. My first thought was that I would put my proposal on the site and it would be sent for review, and at this point someone from within the Dealflow Investment Network office would contact me as an investor so I would be more likely to pay the $249 fee. I received 8 responses from investors overnight and 2 more since then. Thanks Dealflow Investment Network."
David Kriedeman - Chris Christopherson Inc

 BLOG >> Recent

Book Investing [Books
Posted on April 25, 2019 @ 06:12:00 AM by Paul Meagher

Normally, I simply buy books because I want to read the books. I've never really thought about buying a book as a financial investment. I recently purchased a book for my wife's birthday that I knew she would like but it was no longer in print and copies were hard to come by. I did manage to secure a copy for $120 on Amazon but after the expected delivery date arrived and there was no book I contacted the seller who quickly accepted the fact that it was lost and offered to source another one or refund me. I was refunded the next day with an explanation that they couldn't source another one. I suspect the book seller realized s/he could get more for the book and played a little charade with me that it somehow got lost in transit. No tracking numbers were ever issued. When I initially purchased the book on Amazon, the price for the book immediately jumped to around $200 because that was the price the other sellers were offering for their copies. Some sellers listed as high as around $500. I did eventually source another copy of the book for around my original price. Now I cannot find any copies on Amazon which makes me wonder what price I might be able to put on it as an Amazon seller if I wanted to sell.

The co-author of the book, Timothy Asch, was trained in photography by Ansel Adams and includes beautiful black and white photos of what local life was like in 1952.

Timothy Asch later became a leading visual anthropologist and preferred to use film more in his later documentation of other cultures. I learned over the weekend from one of the people he took photos of that there were only made 500 copies made of the book I purchased. So the value of the book is attributable to its rarity, the reputation of the author, and unique content it contains that university departments and local residents would be eager to have.

Another book that I wanted to purchase at one time was an autobiography by Permaculture founder Bill Mollison.

The lowest price of this paperback book on Amazon is currently around $800 !

Again I suspect there is only a limited number of copies of this book. Bill Mollison founded the publishing company Tagari which does not sell this book anymore. The rarity of the book coupled with the number of admirers of his work means you can ask a high price for this book.

If I decided to get into book investing in a more serious way one strategy I might use would be to corner the market on a book. If there was a book that I thought was rare and desirable with only a limited number of copies available for sale I might buy all the available copies within a price range so that I can exert more control over the price and availability. I have no experience in deploying this strategy so can't tell you whether it would be successful or not.

Like any investing you have to be good at valuation and not let your biases get in the way. It would require more research into the fine points of book investing on my part before I went from reading books to investing in them. There are lots of people who make money selling used books and this is probably only one of many strategies they might use.

Permalink 

 Archive 
 

Archive


 November 2023 [1]
 June 2023 [1]
 May 2023 [1]
 April 2023 [1]
 March 2023 [6]
 February 2023 [1]
 November 2022 [2]
 October 2022 [2]
 August 2022 [2]
 May 2022 [2]
 April 2022 [4]
 March 2022 [1]
 February 2022 [1]
 January 2022 [2]
 December 2021 [1]
 November 2021 [2]
 October 2021 [1]
 July 2021 [1]
 June 2021 [1]
 May 2021 [3]
 April 2021 [3]
 March 2021 [4]
 February 2021 [1]
 January 2021 [1]
 December 2020 [2]
 November 2020 [1]
 August 2020 [1]
 June 2020 [4]
 May 2020 [1]
 April 2020 [2]
 March 2020 [2]
 February 2020 [1]
 January 2020 [2]
 December 2019 [1]
 November 2019 [2]
 October 2019 [2]
 September 2019 [1]
 July 2019 [1]
 June 2019 [2]
 May 2019 [3]
 April 2019 [5]
 March 2019 [4]
 February 2019 [3]
 January 2019 [3]
 December 2018 [4]
 November 2018 [2]
 September 2018 [2]
 August 2018 [1]
 July 2018 [1]
 June 2018 [1]
 May 2018 [5]
 April 2018 [4]
 March 2018 [2]
 February 2018 [4]
 January 2018 [4]
 December 2017 [2]
 November 2017 [6]
 October 2017 [6]
 September 2017 [6]
 August 2017 [2]
 July 2017 [2]
 June 2017 [5]
 May 2017 [7]
 April 2017 [6]
 March 2017 [8]
 February 2017 [7]
 January 2017 [9]
 December 2016 [7]
 November 2016 [7]
 October 2016 [5]
 September 2016 [5]
 August 2016 [4]
 July 2016 [6]
 June 2016 [5]
 May 2016 [10]
 April 2016 [12]
 March 2016 [10]
 February 2016 [11]
 January 2016 [12]
 December 2015 [6]
 November 2015 [8]
 October 2015 [12]
 September 2015 [10]
 August 2015 [14]
 July 2015 [9]
 June 2015 [9]
 May 2015 [10]
 April 2015 [9]
 March 2015 [8]
 February 2015 [8]
 January 2015 [5]
 December 2014 [11]
 November 2014 [10]
 October 2014 [10]
 September 2014 [8]
 August 2014 [7]
 July 2014 [5]
 June 2014 [7]
 May 2014 [6]
 April 2014 [3]
 March 2014 [8]
 February 2014 [6]
 January 2014 [5]
 December 2013 [5]
 November 2013 [3]
 October 2013 [4]
 September 2013 [11]
 August 2013 [4]
 July 2013 [8]
 June 2013 [10]
 May 2013 [14]
 April 2013 [12]
 March 2013 [11]
 February 2013 [19]
 January 2013 [20]
 December 2012 [5]
 November 2012 [1]
 October 2012 [3]
 September 2012 [1]
 August 2012 [1]
 July 2012 [1]
 June 2012 [2]


Categories


 Agriculture [77]
 Bayesian Inference [14]
 Books [18]
 Business Models [24]
 Causal Inference [2]
 Creativity [7]
 Decision Making [17]
 Decision Trees [8]
 Definitions [1]
 Design [38]
 Eco-Green [4]
 Economics [14]
 Education [10]
 Energy [0]
 Entrepreneurship [74]
 Events [7]
 Farming [21]
 Finance [30]
 Future [15]
 Growth [19]
 Investing [25]
 Lean Startup [10]
 Leisure [5]
 Lens Model [9]
 Making [1]
 Management [12]
 Motivation [3]
 Nature [22]
 Patents & Trademarks [1]
 Permaculture [36]
 Psychology [2]
 Real Estate [5]
 Robots [1]
 Selling [12]
 Site News [17]
 Startups [12]
 Statistics [3]
 Systems Thinking [3]
 Trends [11]
 Useful Links [3]
 Valuation [1]
 Venture Capital [5]
 Video [2]
 Writing [2]