Old Manuals For Software Retain Value Publishers Finding New Demand For Books On Older Applications

As some computer users rush to get the latest whiz-bang software upgrade, other users have a low-tech solution to squeezing more out of their existing programs.

Books. Software developers are churning out new versions so quickly that instruction manuals are typically published for only a brief time.

But demand continues as computer users still find use for the old software programs. Maybe a consumer inherits a computer loaded with the dated programs. Or perhaps he or she lands a new job with a company that uses older software.

“Nothing out there is as perishable as a software book, except maybe an income tax book,” said Greg Binder, inventory and analysis manager for MacMillan Publishing USA, the Indiana-based parent of QUE, Hayden and Ziff Davis publishers. “Software books become obsolete after six months.”

So although a software book might be “current” for only a matter of months - it can have an afterlife that can last years.

Book publishers and retailers now are tapping into the new demand for older computer books.

For example, Computer City is planning to expand its book section this year and will keep a larger number of older version software books, rather than immediately return them to the publisher, said a company spokeswoman for the Texas-based computer store chain.

CompUSA also offers a small selection of the older computer software books.

And Crown Books Corp., a Maryland-based bookstore chain, eight months ago added a discount area to its Super Crown computer section, which carries a large number of older version software titles, said Steve Stevens, president.

“Computer books are one of the fastest growth areas with the constant change in software, increasing amount of software offered and the Internet,” he said.

Ron Snyder, an assistant store manager at Super Crown in the Sherman Oaks section of Los Angeles, said sales for older versions books are brisk.

“We get about 20 requests a week for remainders and now we have a place where they can get them,” Snyder said. “We sell quite a few of these books. People go to work at a company with an older software program and they want a book to learn it.”

Retailers get the older software books through a circuitous process that is made possible by the short shelf life of new software books.

MacMillan, like the rest of the book industry, gets a quarter of the books it ships to retailers returned as unsold merchandise, Binder said. The company then sells a portion of those returned books, known as remainders, to wholesale distributors who resell to retailers and at computer trade shows.

MacMillan last year sold $2.5 million worth of computer-related remainder books and this year expects to double that to $5 million, Binder said.

Other issues also are contributing to the demand, say wholesale distributors.

A rapid change in hardware has led some computer users to give their old computers - loaded with dated software - to friends or family members.

Tom Tabert, owner of the Denver-based Book Tech Distributing Inc., says that’s when the search begins for the instruction manuals to go with the old software.