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We also have a discount store here called Ollie's. I don't know if they are nation-wide or not. They sell a lot of books for about 1/4 of the suggested retail price on the dust cover. I've gotten quite a few books there, but I guess they are close-outs from the publishers.
Location: East of Seattle since 1992, 615' Elevation, Zone 8b - originally from SF Bay Area
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I would suggest places like Goodwill and Value Village near you. We have recently donated boxes and boxes of books to them since my wife and daughter have gone to Kindle and library downloads. Many others have likely done the same, so they must be selling them cheap or will run out of space.
Shipping has increased, but it is primarily the cost of books themselves. I was looking for a used paperback, not rare, not special, and expected to find it in "very good" condition for $2.50... the cheapest is in "acceptable" condition from Goodwill for $8.00 plus shipping. Other books I looked up (including some I bought just pre-pandemic) are likewise 2x to 4x what I expected, or paid for pre-pandemic.
Although I am normally an avid bookstore browser, I have not been inside a bookstore in two years either, so I don't know what the bookstore prices are now.
As someone who sells books on Amazon I will give my 2 cents. Perhaps we should up that to a quarter.
Some of it is inventory. A lot of Amazon sellers buy books at auctions and from various large book sales. Much of that has been curtailed the past 2 years. So I have noticed that a particular title has less actual books for sale than before. And if its just a few sellers or one the price will go higher.
And demand selling online has gone up. The fact you said that you have not been in a bookstore for 2 years speaks volumes. Multiply that by millions of people and that puts pressure on online prices. Its been Amazon or going out and risking covid for that used paperback.
I have not bought anything on Amazon in almost two years, and was searching for a used book today. I noticed with surprise that the price was about triple from what I expected. A brief look into about dozen other books showed that this has indeed happened across the board: all the used books I checked out were listed for twice to four times the price for which you could order them 2.5 years ago! This is quite unbelievable! While the fact that I have thousands of used books (mostly from $1 library sales, some for $4-$8 sourced from Amazon) could make me a real profiteer if I decide to sell my home library in 30 years (if I can't see enough to read any more), it is still a rather unpleasant surprise. I have so many books that I don't think I want too many more, but still. Are paper books suddenly becoming valuable antiques, or is this just a general effect of inflation?
You might need to give in to e-books, they are far cheaper than print versions, and you have the advantage that they are searchable. My wife was old school about this, a trained journalist and ardent bibliophile, but I enticed her over to the dark side after a few years and she's a total convert.
Paradoxically it's her son (turns 30 this year) who is stubborn about it. He buys used books on Amazon all the time. He likes the physicality of books, the space they take on shelves, I guess. He is so reverent about books that he won't take notes in them or anything like that.
I have not bought anything on Amazon in almost two years, and was searching for a used book today. I noticed with surprise that the price was about triple from what I expected. A brief look into about dozen other books showed that this has indeed happened across the board: all the used books I checked out were listed for twice to four times the price for which you could order them 2.5 years ago! This is quite unbelievable! While the fact that I have thousands of used books (mostly from $1 library sales, some for $4-$8 sourced from Amazon) could make me a real profiteer if I decide to sell my home library in 30 years (if I can't see enough to read any more), it is still a rather unpleasant surprise. I have so many books that I don't think I want too many more, but still. Are paper books suddenly becoming valuable antiques, or is this just a general effect of inflation?
I am a former librarian and I can tell you right now that paperback books are rarely collector's items. Paperbacks are almost never printed on acid free paper so that the pages beginning turning yellow and brittle after only a few years or so. Plus all too often, the binding on a paperback is not intended to hold up over the years. Even if you carefully store your paperbacks on a shelf and never read them again, the book will fall apart as quickly as its removed from the shelf and someone opens it up to try to read it.
This is only my humble opinion, but Amazon seems to have turned its book sales into a bit of a scam. Amazon displays its own products first and lists a price that includes the cost of shipping. After it's own list of books, Amazon will show you the books for sale from other distributors - except that now you are hit with a $3.99 (or more) shipping fee. Those used books look like a bargain until you read the fine print about taxes and fees and add everything up.
I used to love getting bargains through Amazon before they started slapping you with all those extra fees. If you buy a book via Amazon today and pay for the price of the book plus the price of shipping, you will not be able to recoup those shipping fees tomorrow.
I really hate to be a Debbie Downer in this regard, but don't go out and buy a bunch of paperbacks in the belief that their value will climb over the years. It just won't.
When my library opened, I was thrilled to get back to their sale room. I found 4 books and when I went to buy them, I was told 12.00. I said, "excuse me?". The woman repeated it, 12.00. I was shocked. It was 2 paperback and 2 hardbacks. My mother told me her library is doing the same thing, doubling prices. That has nothing to do with transportation or shipping. Doesn't make sense to me other than they are trying to get back what they lost during pandemic.
Yes, not only that, but I just bought a classic, Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell, that had a "warning" on the page prior to the start of the book that the novel presented racial stereotypes that might be offensive to some readers. I had enjoyed the television series with Judi Dench so I thought I would read the book, which I did, but I failed to see any racial stereotypes whatsoever. (As there were no characters in the novel that were not white Europeans, I thought it might have referred to the time the character's brother was in India, but nope, did not find anything offensive there.)
So maybe some publishers are publishing the warning "just in case"?
A little off-topic but here is a link to the racial stereotyping that I found with a quick Google search. Not having read the book, I am not in a position to assess how valid the point is. It looks like a note rather than the best link to analyze this point. https://blogs.dickinson.edu/403lit/2...d-edward-said/
Edward Said’s Orientalism is a very important treatise on the topic and it is included in the reference in the link provided, assuming you wanted more than Fox News treatment of the subject. I’d recommend that book very highly.
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