[Fuxxy Elf]

Second hand book shops are a given, everyone on both sides of the pond and beyond have at one time in their life bought from a second hand book shop. Internet sites and Supermarkets have got into the act of cheap new books, and various big chains have good summer reading deals, ie BOGOF or 3 for 2.

But...(and yes there is a point to this post) I'm a little in the dark about Publisher's Warehouses, shops where you weigh books for their price (highly innovative but a bugger if you read Big Fat Fantasy) and The Works. These kind of shops litter British high streets, I'm not sure about beyond there. And usually they are full of crap, box sets of Catherine Cookson or Omnibus' of various gorefests like Shaun Hutson or Richard Laymon. But every so often you find a gem, and yesterday I found a gem but for the first time it made me question the role and the purpose of these shops.

I found a copy of James Barclay's Cry of the Newborn, in it's Trade Paperback Form (is that right? the larger paperback form than usual?) for £2.99. Now this has only been out a couple of months hasn't it? And Waterstones and Smiths still have it at like £12.99. So my question is this...how do shops like these get to sell virtually new books at a fraction of the RRP? Is it at a loss to the author? I know James reads this forum so it would be interesting to know if he was aware of how cheap you can buy his book. Is is at a loss to the shop or the publisher? Someone must be losing somewhere. And if one new book slips through the net, why not more? Why don't we see all the big fantasy hits of the last few months on these shelves? I'd save a fortune if Erikson, Bakker, Martin and Lynch were available at £2.99, they've all been published in this big paperback version so what's the difference?

And just to make the thread interesting, what's the best deal you've ever seen or purchased bookwise?

P.S. Finally, I have something new to say, and a legitimate reason to start a thread. I'm so proud:D

[JonLaidlow]

Publishers dump them. They probably overprinted so that shops could do big displays of Barclay's book, but now the launch period is over and its not selling so well, they're dumping the trade paperback from the warehouse. The small paperback will probably be along soon, which a lot of people still wait for.

J

[farnés]

Where I live (Amsterdam), it's impossible to find truely good deals. Paperbacks are sold for about $19,- each and hardbacks sell for $35,- each. These prices will be even higher if a book has just been released.

In seconhand bookstores I would pay $11,- for paperbacks and I would still have to spend $ 19,- if I find a hardback that I want.

I still love secondhand bookstores or any bookstore for that matter, but I try to avoid them. Why? The best deals I get are at Amazon.

[Sidmyster]

i got Ian Graham's Monument for 49p from WHSmith about 2/3 months after its release.

[odo]

Where I live (Amsterdam), it's impossible to find truely good deals.

Humm, I was in Amsterdam for a day this Spring (I live in Spain) and happened to find "Camouflage" by Joe Haldeman, which is this year Nebula winner, for only 3€ in hardcover. It was at a bookstore called The American Book Center. I only had some minutes to take a look, but it seemed to me that there were quite a number of bargain and discount books. They a website:

http://www.abc.nl/

and they say they're now on sale since they are moving.

A very convenient website for buying books with free delivery (which makes it way cheaper than amazon) is The book depository:

http://www.bookdepository.co.uk/

And for second-hand books at low price www.abebooks.com

[Iskaral Pust]

I discovered http://www.readitswapit.co.uk recently and it's a great place for finding books - all you pay is package. I'm sure there's probably an equivilant site for most other countries if you have a nosey about. It's best for finding popular fiction, but there's still a fair enough section of sci-fi and fantasy.

The best bargain I ever found was a massive good-as-new hardback for 4euros, it wasn't a bad book either... :)

[Physics Knight]

I found at a used book sale a good-as-new Wayfar's Redemption paperback for $1 (Canadain) and Malafrina by Ursual LeGuin as well as the Left Hand of Darkness (great story, sci-fi) for $1 each too. They also had all the Robert Jordan hardbacks in great condition for I think 3 or 5$ each, but I don't need those :) At used book shops and sales they tend to under-price fantasy.

There are also booksales in places here in Canada that sell publishers' overstock, which are new books and are very cheap. Never gotten any fantasy, but I've gotten some good ones there. It's great if you don't mind the black marks they put on the books. As a kid, I went to the GSU annual booksale at UofT and I completed my collection of Garfield comics (I now have 1-28 or something, before I stopped).

I actually was once talking to an (non-fantasy) author about how I loved her book and how fantastic it was. She asked me where I got it, and I had to reluctanty (because I don't lie) tell her that I got it from a publisher's overstock sale. Her face fell and she said, "They are selling it there already?" :eek:

[frogbeastegg]

The Works.
I work at The Works :D Or more accurately at one of the bigger branches.

It's a question we're asked from time to time. Usually by people squinting dubiously and all but accusing us of selling books with 6 pages of Spanish in the middle, misprints, badly bound editions, or other such garbage. :cough: We do have the occasional misprint or disaster, but never by intention and at probably the same rate as any full price bookshop. Most of the damage done to our stock is done by our more barbarous customers - I tell you, some days I could do murder for the complete lack of respect people show for our goods! Anyone who browses through a book while eating doughnuts, using the greasy hand to turn the pages needs to be hit with large sticks for a decade or two. And as for the one who spilled coffee all over an entire shelf of books :mad:

There are several ways we get our books, and an assortment of ways we keep costs down so we call sell things for less.

The first is remainders; this gets us most of the HBs, trade paperbacks and some mass market PBs. These are books places like Waterstones have had, not sold and then returned to the publisher as part of a sale or return agreement. The publisher is then happy to shift them on at a cheaper price, to clear up stock space and recoup as much of its investment as it can. Also, when a book comes out in MMP the trade and HB editions become almost obsolete.

The second is the weight of the brand. Remainders LMD (of which The Works is the main arm, with others being Booksale, Banana Books,, and The Art Depo) is the largest discount book chain in the UK. It has buying power from that.

The third is that we don't put such a mark up on our goods as other bookshops. Brand new, mint condition AA 2007 spiral bound road atlases? We're selling them for £5.99! Everywhere else is charging the RRP (£14.99 IIRC), so they earn more on each copy. The theory is that we sell more at this cheaper price, and so it works out with us about even or ahead, as well as bringing customers to us and not W H Smiths. This very likely has a lot of truth in it; they've been flying off the stands. Ditto for most of the other hot titles. We did terrifying things with Kate Mosse's Labyrinth: £2.99 for the MMP when everywhere else in town was still charging £7.99! And only £3.99 for the otherwise unavailable HB! We sold out in a couple of days. And sold out again, and again, and again.

Linked to that, costs are kept low. :grumble: I shall spare you my mutterings. On the small scale I really like my job. On the large scale, bah! Company policy, upper management 'ideas', limitations we can't do anything about and struggle to work under ...

Fourthly, many of the £1.99 paperbacks are identical in every single respect to those you see in Waterstones etc, often on the shelves at the same time. I don't know how we get these books and sell them on for £1.99 each or 3 for £5. It's not all best sellers, big names and tat - I've had some damned good titles from this range, and some hard to find books. I suspect it's a combination of using our name to buy them for less, and then not placing such a mark up on them.

Fifthly, we sell more than books. Books are our main, but we also do art supplies, children’s stuff, and more.

And more I won't go into. After a day at work I'm strangely reluctant to continue talking business ;)

As for what we stock and how we choose it, it's not so simple as the usual bookshops. Some titles we can request by name, specifically and in specific formats, when assembling our delivery order. This is - infuriatingly - the rarer way. For the most part we are either assigned so called 'core line' books, shades of "You will have 10 copies of soppy saga number 10! And you will like it!", or we request X number of X sort of remainders, and then get whatever the packing people felt like sending us, taken out of whatever was in the warehouse at the time.



Some inside tips, for cheap book hunters. Hope this doesn’t sound like an advert. :)

If you see it and have some interest in it, get it NOW! If you decide to wait you may never have the chance.

If you want a HB/trade PB edition of a book, try checking The Works about 2 months before the MMP is due, and then keep on checking. Sometimes it takes a bit longer for the HB/trade PBs to enter remaindered status, sometimes it does happen faster. Chances are those versions will be remaindered; from there it's chance as to whether your branch requests any new remainders and what they are sent.

If you saw a specific book and it has sold out, do keep trying. Even if it's a remaindered title. If it doesn't reappear within 6 or so weeks then chances are it won't. Otherwise it very well might, again depending on what is ordered and given.

Never think that "that cheap bookshop" won't have something because it's "too good for the likes of them", or that "only failed or crap books end up in there". I used to think that. I'm a convert now, and so grateful for my 20% staff discount. We've had plenty of popular and/or talented authors, and critically and/or publicly acclaimed works. Not always a good thing from my own POV; my nice collection of aSoIaF mass market paperbacks has been ruined by the inclusion of a HB of 'Feast For the Crows', and I've now got far more HBs than I've space for. Piled up ceiling high, on top of groaning bookcases. :eek:

A very specific one, based on something I know is in stock in my branch and likely is in others too: If you see a copy of Neil Gaiman's 'Stardust' for £1.99 buy it. Brilliant, brilliant book; loved it.

It’s very much worth a general wander through every few weeks, just to see if anything good has come in. Don’t check religiously every week, unless there’s a specific book you expect to appear on remainder soon or unless you have a taste for sagas, mysteries, thrillers and suchlike.

For those of you with younger children, my own branch (and thus I’d expect many others) have plenty of the wonderful, usually ferociously expensive, Walker etc children’s books for £1.25. The children’s ‘nice’ book section is one of my favourites, because I know I’d have adored it as a child.

[WilliamLexner]

I got a first edition of Peter BEagles The Last Unicorn for one dollar at a library book sale. Same for the first edition of A Game of Thrones.

[KatG]

The problem is that a lot of the books that get returned from bookstores to wholesalers or publishers can't then be resold as regular books. So they get remaindered and sold at cost. This is a better fate for many of the paperbacks than they wold have otherwise -- having their covers ripped off and the books pulped. Bookstores and distributors also sell off their overstock that they can't return for one reason or another, again at cost, that is if they aren't selling it as a discount sale themselves. I have on occasion gotten some very nice books off of chain stores for a buck or two. Money does get back to the publishers and so to the authors on these sales, but of course it's a great deal more reduced than on a regular retail sale.

However, it can still provide a benefit in that, like a lending library, it gets copies of the book in circulation and being read, and those people may then recommend the book to others. And the person who bought the book cheap at The Works say, might then pony up more for the next book by the author, if they like the first one.

The big names are less likely to pop up because the copies are more in circulation and because the bookstores like to keep the copies on hand for backstock, and because publishers will try to turn returns around of them if they possibly can. And yes, Fussy, the big paperbacks are called trade paperbacks.

The best deals I've found have usually been at library sales, where mass market paperbacks may be a quarter and hardcovers only a couple of bucks. The best ones are when your local library has a good paperback selection, because otherwise it can be hard to get ahold of much sff, but the push to put sff titles in hardcover so that they can be in more libraries has certainly helped. The coolest deals are when you can pick up omnibuses of multiple novels for very little.