By the
first sale doctrine, according to a
court decision in the early part of the
20th century,
consumers are allowed to
resell books. A
publisher cannot put a
restrictive license on his books preventing consumers from selling them after the fact.
And this is where the used bookstore comes in.
Used bookstores take used books of good condition in exchange for either cash or trade credit for more books. Usually, the store will offer more value in trade credit than in cash. This lets other patrons come in and buy these used books at more than the store paid for them but less than they would cost new, thus benefiting all sides of the equation.
Some writers object to used bookstores, but most of the objection is to the shady practice of selling stripped books, books which have been reported to the publisher as destroyed. This robs the writers and publishers of royalties from the book while enriching the new-bookstore employees who trade them in. Another objection is to the prominent placement of used books on the Amazon.com website, thus making it more attractive to a potential buyer to buy the used version than a new version.
Though chain bookstores such as Barnes & Noble have been killing off neighborhood bookstores that deal in new books, they have not affected used bookstores as detrimentally. As a result, many used bookstores remain in business, and any decently-sized town should have at least two or three.
One of the largest used (and new) bookstores in the world is Powell's, of the Pacific Northwest, ensconced in a multilevel warehouse building. Used bookstores provide excellent fodder for use with the BookCrossing book-dissemination website.