Love Bigwig.

I love Half-Price Books. Love love love. Cause their policy is simple: half the cover price, no foolin'.

This is the subject of some talk amogn used booksellers in my city, because the books have a bad habit of not selling when they're sold across the board at 1/2 cover. Or, the books that would have sold anyway sell at that price, but their more obscure brethren don't, and they sit on the shelves of the used book store forever. There's talk fo a new guy setting himself up in Union Square (Somerville) who has an algorithm that goes out onto ABE.com and checks what any given book is selling for, online, and then sets the price according to what the market will bear -- so, a good-shape used Coraline (which I got for $7 without a dustjacket) would sell for more than 1/2 cover, while a worthless Boys Own Adventure from 1952 would be priced as if it were worthless.

Anyway, it's supposed to be the revolution in used bookselling, and a tool to help keep the brick-and-mortar businesses alive. Around here, they're having trouble -- either they have to specialize (academics mostly), or they have to be in incredibly cheap real estate (Wakefield), or they have to have some other related business (new books, comics) that keeps the used book business afloat.

My faves include Master of Murder , the Final Friends trilogy, and The Weekend.

Those are all good, though I can't distinguish Weekend from Slumber Party. Spellbound is one of my favorites, so I was glad to find it. If I recall correctly, it's the one with animal possession. Oh, I also love the Last Vampire series, though it got kind of weird near the end. The first few are great.

Hmmm. Maybe I'll try and dig those up and give them another read.

Just remember that his target audience was young adults, so the writing style will throw you at first, after having read many older people books since then.

because the books have a bad habit of not selling when they're sold across the board at 1/2 cover. Or, the books that would have sold anyway sell at that price, but their more obscure brethren don't, and they sit on the shelves of the used book store forever.

That's odd. Is a quarter too much to pay for a book? Dawn Treader also has a FREE box to get rid of shit.

so, a good-shape used Coraline (which I got for $7 without a dustjacket) would sell for more than 1/2 cover, while a worthless Boys Own Adventure from 1952 would be priced as if it were worthless.

Hm. I guess I could deal with paying more than half for good condition, but these Pike books weren't in stellar condition, so it annoyed me more. And the Tea-Time seemed to be arbitrarily priced, as it didn't have an American price. It looked to be a British copy, which was cool. I do hope the used book business stays afloat.

speaking of used, anyone know where to get copies of the Bourne Identity series that DONT have Matt Damon on the cover? Usually, Amazon is my go to on non movie covers, but since the book is so old, they only have the new stuff.

That's odd. Is a quarter too much to pay for a book?

I once frequented a used bookstore (The Bookshop, Chapel Hill, NC) that had a "bargain corner" -- 25 cents for paperbacks, 50 cents for hardcovers. I found a lot of good reading there.

speaking of used, anyone know where to get copies of the Bourne Identity series that DONT have Matt Damon on the cover?

I got a hardcover of it a couple of years ago (before the movie came out, I'm afraid) from a library discard pile for free. So, used book stores are probably the right place to look, and a hardcover may give you better odds, since tie-ins seem to be always paperback.

I have gotten $0.25 books before, and several freebies -- but usually, the best books I get are either priced as good books, or are the result of luck. I picked up a first edition of Something Wicked This Way Comes, with its original dustjacket, for $10, because the dustjacket was a bit tattered and nobody at the store had gotten around to ironing it and putting it under a plastic cover. That one extra step, and they would have charged me $20, easy. (And I think if they'd checked around, and noticed it was a 1/e, they would probably have tried to sell it for rather more.)

There's a table on the sidewalk in front of Sam Weller's in downtown Salt Lake City where the 25 cent/5 for a dollar books are. They used to have oodles of weird political diatribes, but the last time it was mostly cheesy romances. Great place to pick up a book you don't minde losing on hte bus.

yeah, i sometimes do that for books when I'm travelling. Then I just leave them in the hotel or the airport or whatever.

We have a Hospice bookstore in my town, all paperbacks about twenty-five cents, hardcovers priced individually, as there aren't many of them, but dirt cheap. It's fun!