Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Still Buying Books @ Both Locations


Spring 2010 is turning out to be the busiest year in the shop's history, and we're energetically buying books at both locations. We're seeing lots of stock already, but can always use more. In particular, we're looking for:

• Recent ($9.99-$13.50 cover price) mass market paperbacks, esp. recent science fiction, fantasy, and murder mysteries.

• Recent literary fiction (eg., Dave Eggers; Haruki Murakami; Cormac McCarthy; David Sedaris; Paul Auster; Zadie Smith; Nicola Krauss)

• Recent quality nonfiction (eg., Christopher Hitchens; Richard Dawkins; Daniel Dennett; Jared Diamond)

• Award winners (eg., New York Times Notable Books of The Year)

• Literary classics (eg., Orwell, Hemingway, Huxley, Hesse, Borges, Vonnegut, Pynchon, Richler)

• Modern first editions; deluxe Folio and Easton Press editions; rare and scholarly books that we think we can resell within 12-24 months

We pay up to 40% of our retail price in cash on the spot for prime material.

We buy books every day up until 5 pm, unlike many local competitors who just issue trade credit, or only buy on certain days of the week. There's never any need to make an appointment; just bring your books in and our staff will gladly to examine them and make an offer on those we can use.

There are also certain kinds of books that we're never looking for:

• Damaged books of any kind

• Books we have way too many of (eg., if we already have 14 copies of Ian McEwan's Atonement in the back room, we don't want a 15th copy)

• Most Book Club editions

• Books widely remaindered by Chapters, Coles, Book Warehouse, etc.

• Magazines, textbooks and computer books

• Very common airport-bestseller mass market paperbacks: Danielle Steel; John Grisham; Dan Brown; V.C. Andrews; James Patterson et al. These authors are printed in massive quantities, are available in every thrift store in town, and are almost never good candidates for resale.