Raven Used Books in college-town Cambridge, Mass., caters to students, local intellectuals and book lovers of all types.
Book habits are hard to break. And if you're accustomed to scarfing up a $15 paperback or $25 hardcover each week, it's an $1,000-a-year habit. With this recession on (and on and on) it may be too much for your budget to bear.
What's a bibliophile to do? Libraries are great, but you may not be in the mood. And most of us want to buy certain titles to keep forever, or for as long as the infatuation lasts.
So try this: Next time you're in a critical mood, look your bookshelves in the eye and fill a cardboard box with titles for which you no longer have passion or practical use. Cart them down to a really good used bookstore and trade them (well, the ones that the bookseller will take) for store credit. Roughly speaking, letting go of 100 books should bring you back 50, each yours for a week or a lifetime. You may even eventually trade in those 50 titles for another 25.
Fresh reading for a year with no cash outlay; it's an attractive proposition in any economy. And there are signs that in these times more folks are checking out the used-bookstore scene.
"Some used booksellers say they're seeing more walk-in customers, people who want to make sure they're getting what they're paying for" rather than buying online, says Brendan Sherar, founder and CEO of Biblio.com, which sells used and new volumes from thousands of independent bookstores.
What do used bookstores want to buy? "The past 12 months of bestsellers are usually in high demand, but it falls apart with mass-produced authors," says Sherar. "With Stephen King, hundreds of thousands of copies hit the market simultaneously. They all get gobbled up, read within a week and then dumped on the market, which makes the used price collapse."
One sure thing: "There's always a need for classics like Faulkner, provided they're in reasonably good shape," says Sherar.
