Book Buying Policy

What we buy: (more info further down):  

1. First and foremost, books that we need.  I.e. Fit the subjects we carry, if we’re not overstocked in that subject.
2. Books that are in "very good to excellent" condition (clean, unmarked, readable spine, etc.).
3. Books that we think we can sell (either in the store or over the Internet.)  

Sounds simple, but there are several key factors, including our discretion, involved.

 How We Pay You:

1. Once we select the books we want to buy, we quickly estimate our selling price* for those books.  We then OFFER you the choice of either:
1. Cash (or check) - 30% of our estimated selling price.  Or,
2. Trade credit in our store - 50% of our estimated selling price.

We’ll issue a card to you stating your amount of credit, and which is good for six months.  We keep no record of any credit due you, so YOU MUST KEEP THAT CARD TO BE ABLE TO REDEEM YOUR CREDIT.  You may convert that card, or any part thereof, to cash anytime within the six months (the cash amount is 60% of the trade amount).  The trade credit expires after six months.

Handy Guidelines:

1. Generally, hardcover books must have their dust jackets.
2. For fiction, our largest category, we prefer paperbacks to hardcovers.  

Please Note:  If you believe any of your books are rare and particularly valuable, please tell us in advance.  We’ll take extra time researching the value before we make you an offer.  Otherwise we move pretty fast and necessarily make a lot of quick judgments and assumptions in our decision-making.

 All Purchases, Once Paid or Trade Credit Issued, Are Final

 * We generally price books at half their current price.  We do, however,  sometimes adjust the estimated selling price down (usually by 50 cents) if the book shows wear or is marked (book store stamp, owner’s name, etc.)

Book Buying Guidelines

(i.e., What we are interested in)

·        What we do not buy:

o       Text books

o       Encyclopedias

o       Harlequin or any type of “series” romance novels

o       Most ex-library books (we do make some exceptions)

o       Very old and rare books (we cannot offer a proper value for them)

o       Books that are not in “very good to excellent” shape

§         I.e., we would pass on any book whose cover or dust jacket is bent or torn, spine is broken and/or hard to read, pages are yellowed, marked or torn

·        Once we filter out all books which fall into the above categories we then:

o       Check year-to-date sales (from a sister store) and our current on-hand inventory of the specific title.  If sales are good and our on-hand is  not too high, we will offer to buy the book.

o         If we do not have the book and have no sales history in our computer, we will check the author’s sales statistics for his/her other titles and let that guide our purchasing decision.

·          Please note that we sell fiction hardbacks for the same (or lower) price that we sell the paperback for once the title is released in paperback.  This means that while paperbacks usually sell for ½ their list price, fiction hardbacks will usually sell for 10-20% of their original list price once the paperback is released.