Alibris: New, Used, and Rare Books Great Prices
Tenderspirits-Web-Mall:
Used Books Are A Very Good Value For Your Money
Author: Tenderspirit
My parents never encouraged me to read books when I was young. I hated to
read. It was not until I was around 37 years old that I really started to
enjoy reading. I started reading self help books. I read every book
I could get my hands on about psychology. Then I went back to school and
got my B.S. degree in Business Administration and Accounting. That is when
I first learned about buying used books. The university had a book
exchange. It was great. You could buy books for about half their
cost new then sell them back for about half of what you paid for them.
Being a starving student that was definitely the way to go.
You can also find used books online
that you need for college. There are many places to buy used textbooks. You will
have to see what condition they are in before you decide to buy, but this is a
great way to save money. Some books may have notes included and passages
highlighted, but for the most part, this may help you out more than it will
hinder you. Once you are done with your textbooks, you can then sell your used
books online as well. There are always student who need books, and as long as
the edition you have is still current, you should have no trouble finding a
buyer.
I can't help but wonder where I
would be in life had I started reading books when I was a child.
Now I love books. My sister
has always had a bookshelf full of books, and I never ran out of stuff to read.
But she has now moved hundreds of miles away. Today, I’m on my own when it comes to books, and I can’t always afford to buy stacks of them from the bookstore.
That is because I go to the used bookstores online.
You can find used books online in many different places. Many websites like Barnes and Noble have new as well as used books you can buy. You can get them for a cheaper price, and if there are different editions of the book, you may find all of them available that way. Some places will also give you a description of the exact condition of the book, and this takes some of the guess work out of ordering used books online. If the description doesn’t match what you are told, you may be able to get a refund. Policies vary per site, so make sure you read the fine print.
A
great place to go also is Alibris!
You can also find used books online by browsing through eBay. If you want a hard to find book, an out of print book, or even an autographed copy, this may be the first place to look. This may be the best source of used books online, though you may not get what you want if you are outbid. It doesn’t hurt to try, however, as you may find something there you can’t find anywhere else. Make sure you read the description fully, and use common sense.
Then when you are finished reading them you can donate them to your
church. You can even get a tax write-off for donating them.
Last year our church decided to do a fund raiser that would not cost a great deal of investment. So many times the fund raiser dinners or selling items for a company takes the largest amount of the funds raised, so that the profit margin is small. We had held several bake sales and it seemed that people were getting tired of donating and buying. We held a rummage sale in the spring; however it was a great deal of work collecting, organizing, pricing and then getting rid of the items that did not sell. One thing that we did notice during the rummage sale was that people liked books. We had many books donated and all of them sold. We decided that we would have a used books sale. We made arrangements with the local library to take any left over books that we might have. The library offered to donate some books for the used books sale.
I went on line to see if I could get some ideas to make this a successful event. I also talked to an owner of a book store to find out the best way to organize the books. The store owner suggested creating an atmosphere that people would want to linger in, the more time people spend looking through books the more apt they are to purchase them. This gave me an idea. We would create a coffee shop book store atmosphere in the gathering space and classroom areas of the fellowship hall. We asked the congregation to donate books. We called several of the elderly people of the congregation to see if they needed help getting their books to the church. We asked everyone to sort their books into categories prior to donating them so that we would save time setting up the used books sale.
We bought gourmet coffee grounds and brewed up several pots. We asked people that did not have books to donate to make bars and cookies, which we sold individually. We placed groups of chairs in secluded locations throughout the space and invited people to spend as much time as they wanted browsing, drinking coffee and reading the books. We placed all the devotionals, spiritual books and self help books by our chapel area so that people could reflect in a quiet space. We placed the children’s used book sale in the nursery area and invited several people to read stories to groups of children through out the day. This allowed the parents time to look through the used books sale while their children were occupied.
The used books sale was a huge success. We had received many books and the majority of them sold. We made a great deal of money on the coffee and the sweets. The few books that were left were easily packed up and brought over to the library. Many people commented on what a relaxing time they had selecting their books.
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