Ramblings about books, book selling, and things

I have been trying not to use my blog for any sort of merchandising or promoting of financial activities...even for myself. I still do not intend to actively promote anything however I will from time to time (hopefully very seldom) make a mention of my efforts of trying to sell used books.
As some of my readers know I have been trying to sell used books for the past eight years. For a little while I was making a fairly good run at it until the economy began to turn in early 2007. What's that? The economy didn't crash until late 2008. No, economies don't crash all of a sudden. There is a build up to it and the more government tries to fix it, the worse it gets.
In April 2007 I began noticing a decrease in sales. While my inventory never did include the so-called "valuable" books, I did, and still do, have a small inventory of books priced in the $50 to $300 range. It was these books that stopped selling first. Over the past 5 years even the least expensive books have stopped selling. Some people say that it wasn't necessarily the economy that caused my books to stop selling, but the advances in digital technology. That may have had some effect, but in my case, very little. Most of my holding are of books that are older and have not been or ever will be digitized. Even the USGS (U.S. Geological Society) publications that I have still sell even though they are almost all available online at no or very little cost through the USGS. Some books you just need to feel in your hand and in dealing with scientific reports the ability to pencil in margin notes when doing your own research is essential.
I still sell the books that I have, but very rarely do I add any inventory. I sell online through two venues, amazon.com and biblio.com. I am trying to deplete my inventory and only have 1127 books left to go. As much as I like selling and dealing with books I am afraid that in the current economic climate (very stagnant and in certain areas, such as where I live on Maryland's Eastern Shore, still in decline) it is just not a viable economic opportunity. I wish it was.