The Price of Knowledge
The reselling of second-hand occult books has long been a divisive topic, with the issue of scalping, buying purely to sell at a higher price, polarising opinion both online and off. What I offer here are a few of my thoughts on this controversial area, may the Gods have mercy on my inbox.
Firstly, a simple fact. If you purchase a book from a publisher with the intention of setting it aside to sell later once it is no longer available from the publisher, you are making a conscious choice to extort a higher price from those wanting to read the book - this is known as scalping and regardless of whether you like the title or not doing so renders you a scalper. “It’s a free market,” many will cry but that’s an oversimplification. No market is morally neutral but instead reflects the ethical and normative state of the communities they are a part of, the occult book community specifically being rooted in authors writing works on the premise of sharing the knowledge and insights they have (most authors will attest to how little financial incentive there is in writing occult books). Scalping violates the communal framework by creating artificial scarcity, leveraging a higher price for personal gain, and turning the book into a speculative asset.
Before continuing let me take a side step and address a related issue, for some may say, “But Daniel, aren’t the publishers themselves creating artificial scarcity by releasing such limited numbers of their books?”
While a valid concern on the surface, this critique stems from a misunderstanding of the realities faced by small occult publishers. Most operate more like cottage industries than commercial presses. They lack access to large-scale warehousing or the capital required for enormous print runs. Holding thousands of books in inventory, especially across multiple titles, is logistically and financially impossible. This challenge is even greater when offering paperback or print-on-demand options that carry thinner margins and higher per-unit costs.
Understanding the constraints faced by publishers is only one side of the issue. Equally troubling is the ideological shield often used to justify scalping: “It’s a free market” when what they are really saying is “people can do whatever they want”. This however is not a justification but a description of deregulated capitalism - it is not a moral defense. There are many things that are legal within a capitalist framework but are widely understood to be ethically wrong (price gouging during lockdowns, payday loans, sweatshop labour being a few examples). Something being legal does not make it acceptable.
Price is supposed to signal value, from the resources allocated to write and create the book to its production, distribution and wages of all those involved. Scalping inflates the price beyond what the community and creator have set without contributing anything of value. It exploits the labour of the author, the vision of the publisher, and the goodwill of the reader. Even the claim made once the book is sold out with the publisher and the scalpers emerge with their ‘stock’ that it costs that much because it is rare and out of stock is false. Your scalped copy is no more rare than when the publisher had only a few copies left. Following a scalper’s logic, a book limited to 200 copies might launch at £50, increasing by £2 as each copy sells so that once only 100 remain that copy costs £248 and the last copy of the book would cost £448. It is a simplistic mentality and demonstrates the fallacy of scalpers logic.
It’s also worth noting that this practice isn’t limited to individuals. On occasion, even established booksellers and independent bookshops have engaged in this kind of opportunistic resale. Whether done privately or professionally, the core issue remains the same: acquiring books with the intent to resell them at a substantial markup once they’re no longer available from the publisher. No one is exempt from the ethical responsibility to support a healthy and respectful market.
Ultimately, scalping is not only morally questionable - it is economically parasitic. It contributes no value to the book, undermines both authors and publishers and corrupts community pricing which is the true market value. Saying it is a free market is not only a shallow dodge of ethical responsibility, it is also bad economics. In a community built on shared knowledge, spiritual depth, and trust, we must ask: what kind of market do we want to support? One that honours the work, or one that mines it for profit?
