Get New Books Cheap

There are lots of places to find cheap books: thrift stores, garage sales, flea markets, antique malls, etc. The selection may not be much, but the price is right. Used book stores probably have higher prices, but it’s worth the money to have so much better a selection. Also, the book store has already weeded out titles not likely to sell or books that are in poor condition. Still, these places have only used books. Where can new books be found at cheap prices?

Fifty years ago, it was nearly impossible to find new books for less than list price. The only exceptions had sold poorly enough that the publisher gave up on them. Rather than tossing unsold copies in the dumpster, they sold these leftovers (or, technically, remainders) to closeout companies that sold them at cheap prices.

Nowadays, publishers put books on remainders much sooner and in greater quantity, for a number of reasons. For one thing, a Supreme Court ruling in 1979 adversely affected tax consequences of keeping inventory once sales started to slow down. Also, conglomerates have bought up most of the largest publishers. The conglomerates are not primarily in the book business and do not have the same level of commitment to their back-list. And so cheap new books sometimes become available as early as a year or two after they were first published.

Large bookstores often have tables of discount books. Although these books are new and available in quantity, these displays have at least one thing in common with the used books at thrift stores: they are not arranged by topic, which makes it hard to find anything in particular.

The best place to shop for new cheap books, therefore, is online. Numerous larger companies have websites that allow customers to shop for remainders by author, title, or topic. Many of these companies often have an affiliate program, meaning that bloggers and others using their own web sites can direct their readers to the remainder companies’ sites and get a percentage of the sales.

So where can new books be found at cheap prices? All over the Internet. You can look for cheap books with your favorite search engine. Or, if you read a blog or other web content, you might see a link to a book closeout site. If you really like that site, remember where to find the link the next time you want to buy books!

Get New Books Cheap