Prospering with Used Books

A dozen years ago, Bob Ticehurst, then 22, quit his day job as an accountant, moved into his parents’ basement in Arlington, Mass., and became one of the first used-book sellers on Amazon’s Marketplace. Since then “MarineBob,” his original handle, has grown his online used-book business under the Got Books name. Today his offices are located in a 69,000-sq.-ft. warehouse in Wilmington, Mass., and the books he sells no longer come mostly from friends. Instead he gets them through nearly 500 Got Books donation containers in New England, operated in partnership primarily with nonprofit organizations that get paid based on the number of books, CDs, and DVDs they collect. By August 2008, Got Books had collected so many books that it added a sister company, Used Book Superstore, to sell off part of its used-book inventory, along with new and bargain titles. There are now four 13,000-sq.-ft. UBS bookstores within a 20-minute drive of the warehouse. But that’s about to change. Continue reading at 'Publishers Weekly'

[ Publishers Weekly | 2012-09-07 00:00:00 UTC ]
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