Selling books by the bag

Source A: an original imagined letter from a visitor to a charity book sale.

The bag price gave me permission to take a chance. Ordinarily I would choose the familiar novelist and leave the other three books behind. With room in the bag, I tried a play, a collection of letters and a book about making musical instruments. I have not finished them all. That does not make the experiment worthless.

Yet the instruction to fill a bag did something strange to my attention. I began judging the space a book occupied. A thick volume seemed poor use of an offer, although its size had no necessary connection with how much I might enjoy it. I also saw a visitor taking books she did not appear to want because leaving room felt like losing money.

I would keep the offer, but I would stop presenting a full bag as the successful outcome. Let the price reduce the risk of an unfamiliar book without turning reading into a competition against the available space.

Source B: an original imagined response from the sale organiser.

A simple bag price helped our volunteers avoid hundreds of individual pricing decisions. It also allowed visitors to know the cost before choosing. We want the books to leave the hall and be read, so I welcome the reader who tried something unfamiliar.

But simplicity at the entrance can create other problems. We had to explain which bags counted, and a person wanting one slim book reasonably asked why she should pay the same as somebody carrying six. We therefore kept a single-book price alongside the bag offer. That made the sign longer but the choice fairer.

Next time, I would emphasise that nobody needs to fill the bag. We cannot decide which books another person will value. We can make the prices clear enough for that person to choose without feeling that an empty corner is a mistake.

Compare the benefits and drawbacks of the bag-price offer as presented by Sources A and B.