Book buying: your preferences, anecdotes, recommendations?

[joderu95]

I live in a town where the largest new book seller is Wal-Mart (yes, Hell is an unpleasant place indeed.) This unfortunate circumstance has forced me to find my books by a variety of other means. Most new books are bought either through the Internet or the relatively rare trip to the big city. There is a good local used books store that is bursting at the seems with novels and in fact is so filled with books it is not uncommon for towers of them to fall over on you while you browse. Over the last few years the breakdown of where I get my books looks something like this:

Internet: 50% (Amazon mostly)
Book stores: 30% (Borders, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, HalfPrice Books etc.)
Mail-In catalogs: 20% (QPB, Sci-Fi Book Club, Edward R. Hamilton)

Powell's is the best bookstore I've ever been in for selection and for buying/selling used books. For a book lover it is very easy to spend an entire day there.

QPB is great if you like recent popular titles both fiction and non-fiction in trade paperback format. They can be annoying with their automatic sending of books if you forget to decline them on a form that is sent out with a catalog every three weeks.

Edward R. Hamilton is good for hardbacks that have been enormously discounted. A typical new hardback that would retail for $24.95 would be $5.95 at this dealer.

 

[sparkchaser]

Powells is fabulous. When I go to Portland, Powells is on the short list of places to go. I like that the new and used books are on the same shelf so you can find the copy that best fits what you're looking for.

The best online place I have found for used books is this search engine: AddALL Used and Out of Print book search

When I buy locally, I first head to the locally owned bookshop and if they don't have it then I head over to Barnes & Noble.