Used bookstore

A bookseller is a company specializing in old and used books shop where the antiquarian booksellers say.

Antique shops offer besides books other old printing products, such as graphics, maps, postcards, newspapers and music or manuscripts, autographs and paintings; However, no old pieces of furniture or similar antiques. There are, for example, specifically specialized bibliophile antique shop, graphics, music, art, rarity (block books, incunabula ), scientific, or newspaper -hand bookshops. Ultimately sell antique shops all information and image carrier, sometimes recordings such as records.

The term " Modern Antiquarian " selling discounted books from the market or from publishing stocks with uplifted Worth ( Remittenden or defects copies), cheap reprints of older titles will be summarized: a market segment that is less of antique book shops specialized than "modern antiquarians ," mail-order companies or is processed from normal bookstores. On the other hand can bring many times their issue price genuine antiquarian books according to demand. Among the pure antiquarian book fairs like the one in Stuttgart or Zurich came 1995 Leipzig at the Book Fair and 2005, the relatively largest at the Frankfurt Book Fair this.

The largest bookseller in the world - with the slogan " 18 Miles of Books " (about 29 km shelf total length) - should be on Broadway The beach Bookstore. Over the past decade several books villages have antique shop in Germany.

Historical Development

With the advancement of reproductive technology, it became possible in the mid- 20th century to produce a facsimile of rare books. This led to a temporary rise in prices for antiquarian books, because as a template for the reprint quality original editions were sought. In the following years, however, prices fell because many customers bought the inexpensive and partially integrated quality facsimile editions and the interest in the original rare book was smaller.

Since the mid- 1990s, antique shops increasingly went on to sell their books on Internet marketplaces. Customers visit the stores less and less, especially because there is the possibility for price comparison on the internet and you will quickly find there usually also on rare plants ( Rara ), or by books in small runs. Sales platforms like AbeBooks, Antbo, the Central Directory of Antiquarian Books ( U.S. MORE ) antiquariat.de, Booklooker or Antiquario present the offer of many antiquarians against a fixed and / or sales commission, which amounted to the displayed price to about 15 % can. The online ordering is of a world of networked directories directly to the often small antiquarian, where the piece found is packaged and sent. This is significant because more and more books are out of print quickly with large circulations.

In Germany there were in 2006 some 1,200 antique shops, of which offer probably 80 percent surcharge on the various online platforms. antiquariat.de has set standards to which the participating distributors are required. These include in particular several years of experience, detailed bibliographic collection of titles offered with the names of all possible defects, fast delivery, fair return opportunity for the customers as well as proper packaging. Others - the U.S. MORE, Antiquario, Antbo - put a business license requires as a condition of participation; the other hand, let the online retail giant eBay and Amazon or platforms like AbeBooks and Booklooker also private to what strongly distorted competition in the opinion of some market participants (although statistical evidence for this missing).

Meta - search engines allow comparative search on offer many of these platforms. Thus, the competitive pressure on the market is very large, so that the many antique offer their books even without a store. Another price drop is characterized as a result of the available over the Internet digital copies of stocks of large libraries, eg the Library of Congress from.

Statistics

Duty economic data on the industry are rare. A revenue survey of the working group in the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of the German Book Trade recorded for the industry in 2005 sales declined by eleven per cent.

According to a 2007 study of U.S. MORE classic antique shops have achieved an average of 55 % of sales online. The online share is within one year increased significantly (previous year 37%). 19% were implemented via traditional mail-order trade, 18 % in the retail store and 9% higher than fairs and markets. Already in 2004, 20% of second-hand bookshops exclusively on the Internet worked.

Antiquaria price

The city of Ludwigsburg and the Club book culture eV annually award the antiquaria Award for " outstanding achievements for the promotion and maintenance of book culture ." It is awarded during the Antiquarian Book Fair Ludwigsburg and is endowed with 6,000 euros.

Journal

In German-speaking countries leading technical body which is published in Frankfurt am Main journal is from the bookseller ( exists since 1948 and since the beginning of 2003 with six booklets in the year), distributed to the members of the Association of German book trade and also to members of the Maximilian Society will.