SBXI - 7th August 2008

Here are the first aggregated results of the SBXI, with one constituent at present, the swings are going to be pretty wild.

Thursday, 7th August 2008 at 12.00noon GMT

111.7233

↑11.72 points, 11.72%

The SBXI is not meant to be an indicator of sales alone. It indicates profitability and sales movement as well as taking into account the total value of those sales. This is not only for the security of the constituent bookshops, but also to allow new members to be seemlessly incorporated onto the index.

This Thursday's figures show rise on last week. Overall there is reasonable health in the secondhand booktrade at the moment. A single bookshop, such as ours, is as likely to be affected by bad weather, one of us taking ill, or unenthusiastic listing, as much as by the overall cash position in the economy.

As with the wider economy, there is considerable nervousness at the moment at the position of day-to-day sales. The past year has seen a sharp rise in our sales to Europe and a general increase in the volatility of UK sales.

If you would like to participate in the project, please e-mail me on david][midoil]etc. We are very keen that sensitive information such as the profitability of individual firms be kept from the market place. To this end we have produced a downloadable calculator which returns a single number value for secondhand book sales aggregated over a certain time period. The algorithm is not reversable except in the case of exceptionally low sales figures. It should be noted that we bear no responsibility for how these figures will be used. The indicator is still in the early stages of its development and requires considerable refinement.