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April 9, 2008 Press Release: Ann Arbor Used Book Business Evolves into Valued Community Service

John recently had a Teeter Talk with Homeless Dave. To kick things off, Dave hauled a load of books, plus John, to the post office on his new cargo bike trailer. See the pictures and read the Talk!

Read about us [pdf] in the May 2007 issue of Ann Arbor's Old West Side News. Thanks to author/editor Dan Madaj for a great article and permission to post it online.

We are a small, family operated, business in Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. We have thousands of quality used books, which we sell online. We buy books, but we prefer to sell on consignment. We also work hard to provide the best service possible. Check out the feedback from our customers!

It all started around the millenium change when Amy Bentley found she had a knack for finding books and reselling them online. She built up her inventory and was successful. Amy decided to go abroad for an extended period of time, and asked her brother-in-law John Weise to maintain her business while she was away.

John glommed on and grew the inventory significantly. John is a programmer/librarian with extensive experience buiding digital library systems. He created an inventory and order fulfillment system geared for accurate and efficient data entry and order fulfillment.

Stephanie Bentley is Amy's sister and John's spouse. Stephanie manages daily operations by providing customer support, adding to the inventory, and fulfilling orders. She is also a very active mom, and teaches spanish and yoga as well.

John and Stephanie live with their two kids Sam and Chloe in the Eberwhite neighborhood close to downtown Ann Arbor.

Amy has recently settled in Hawaii and has established a Books by Chance outpost there.

We began to offer consignment selling in early 2005 when we realized we had the capability to closely track the sale of huge quantities of books, including sources, and precisely how long it takes each book to sell. This was not by accident, but evolved from a general interest in understanding our business better in addition to fund-raising work done in collaboration with a local school where source-based tracking of sales was essential.

Nearly every aspect of the business we do ourselves including book buying/consigning, inventory management, customer service, local advertising, and this web site. One exception is that we take full advantage of the services of Amazon.com to handle all payment transactions and provide an extremely active marketplace. This gives book buying customers a wide variety of payment options, as well as Amazon.com's guarantee of satisfaction. We of course also guarantee satisfaction.

We sincerely hope you give Books by Chance a try. We really enjoy meeting so many great people and we can't wait to meet you!