I have changed my mind about this ABE Books thing. I have had 40
books up there for over a month and at this moment absolutely nothing
has happened. I had to make the decision to either get much more
involved and put in a few hundred books or to cut bait and not waste
any more time on it. My goal was to break even on the subscription fee
over the first 6 months. However, at this point I’m convinced that
there is no way that could happen, even if I got every book I have to
sell in the system. Rather than send good time after bad, I’m just
pulling the plug. Our neighborhood is having a yard sale this Saturday
and I’m putting them all up for sale there. Since it is away from the
house, anything that doesn’t get sold will get driven to either the
library or to the Salvation Army. In some ways this irks me because
some of these books are of reasonable value and it seems like their
getting underutilized. On the other hand, it is cheaper for me to give
them away and not have to spend lots of time on it.
What does bug me is that one of my dreams was to become a bookseller
kind of guy, in person or on the internet or something. In retrospect
that probably isn’t ever going to be anything other than an expensive
hobby. I hate to cut loose dreams, but for the forseeable future I
have better things to do with my time than trying to peddle goods one
by one. Que sera, so it goes.