Bargain Books

I've always loved going to the used bookstore to find bargain books. It's not just that I'm someone who can't resist a deal I also can't resist a book. My love for books defies their utility. Yes I like to read them, but I also love to collect them. I have shelf after shelf of book after book, piling up around my house and onto the floor. I buy books at the drop of a hat, even if I won't have a chance to read them for years.

This is why it is so important for me to find book bargains. Every market varies and fluctuates, but the price of books varies more than almost any other consumer good. If you go to a remaindered book store, for example, you can get last year's best-sellers for pennies. If you go to a used bookstore, sometimes you can find something that would cost you 30 dollars for less than three. If the used book store you go to throws out some of their books, you've really hit the jackpot. There is no telling what you'll find discarded behind the back of the bookstore.

I suppose that my obsession with bargain books started in college. Back then, I bought bargain textbooks because I needed to. I was a poor student living off financial aid, and I needed to make every dollar count. Getting a bargain book wasn't easy in those days. All the students wanted to buy used books, and the bookstores didn't always stock enough of them. Sometimes, the professors would wait until the very last minute to put in their book orders, and as a result we would have to pay full price.

Back then, I used the Internet to buy bargain books. Nowadays, everyone takes this technology for granted, but when I was going to college it was still pretty new. Setting up book swaps with other students over e-mail was something that a lot of people didn't know how to do, and I sort of pioneered it on our campus. There was a bargain bookstore, however, that usually did have pretty good selections of most of the major textbooks used in college. When I couldn't trade books with someone or buy used books from them, that is where I would go. I would say that three times out of four, I could find a used version of whatever I was looking for.