How to Save Money on Books at Bookstores, Online, and Elsewhere

I use several bookstores here in Bucharest

but I do have a favorite: Carturesti. I like them best for several reasons. First, they have created a library with a great feel to it and with great titles, including a large selection of English-language books. Second, they offer discount coupons. Third, they have a great online presence, with a site, blog, email newsletters, Facebook account, etc. While there aren’t many English titles on their site, it’s a good option for Romanian books. They have a number of sales promotions running at any time.

I also shop at used-book stores and used-book stalls downtown.

If you’re interested in ebooks in Romanian, note that Polirom has a selection of ebooks on their Web site. You can download them for free for personal use. Also, if a book you want is out-of-print, you can email them and they might be able to give you an electronic version. It’s all on their Web site here.

I still buy on impulse now and then but that’s not the way to go if you want to save money. Here’s my advice:

Ask a sales clerk whether the bookstore has any discounts at that time, whether they offer 20% off on future purchases (in a certain time interval), or a coupon if you spend a certain amount, etc. If they do offer certain deals such as 20% off on future purchases and you want to buy, say, 3 books, get the cheapest at full price, wander around a bit, and come back and get the other 2 at 20% off.

If you want to buy a classic book, look for Wordsworth Classics or Collins Classics editions. These are the two major publishers that offer classic works of literature at low prices. But there’s a way to get an even better bargain online if you want to read a classic like Alice in Wonderland or the wonderful poetry of William Wordsworth. It’s called Project Gutenberg and is accessible online at www.gutenberg.org

Before I move on to finding the best deal online, I should say that sometimes, despite the low price of a Wordsworth edition, I go for a Penguin book on account of a great introduction about the work. But then again, you can find great book reviews online as well. (These two publishers of cut-price classics print only the text and little else. Collins Classics does offer some sort of very small dictionary at the back and a few words about themselves and the author, but it’s mostly some raw facts.)

Okay, here comes the serious stuff. There are so many great ways to find bargains online, that I don’t know where to begin. I’ll try to write them in list format, so they are easier to follow.

1. Project Gutenberg

Now this is definitely the best deal, because at www.gutenberg.org you get ebooks for free. They are older books, now in public domain, which have been digitized by thousands of volunteers. You can read tens of thousands of ebooks on the Gutenberg site, or download them in various formats (HTML, epub, Kindle with images, Kindle with no images, and others).

2. Amazon

For those of you who shop on Amazon, there’s probably not much that I can say that you don’t know, since Amazon does a great job of promoting their deals and services. You’re probably familiar with the free shipping they offer for purchases of at least $25. I think that’s a great deal. (I’m paying quite a lot of money on shipping when I shop from Amazon UK.)

Amazon also offers great deals on some books at certain times of the year. The Hunger Games, for instance, sold for only $1.96 during one Black Friday Deals Week.

Through its Marketplace, Amazon also offers the option to buy many of their titles used from various sellers. Check the shipping costs to see if it’s worth it. I’ve tried buying used books online from various places, Amazon Marketplace and others, and in the end it wasn’t worth it. I should have thought twice. (Of course, shipping costs are much smaller if they're US to US or UK to UK.) The good thing is that by having such a Marketplace on Amazon and on other online bookstores, you can actually find books whose print runs were exhausted.

Amazon Prime ($119/year) also offers access to the Kindle Owner’s Lending Library, where you can borrow one Kindle book a month for free.

There’s more. If you go to Amazon and search for “free ebooks” you’ll find that there are quite a lot of them.

Amazon also has Kindle Daily Deals as well as monthly selections of Kindle books for $3.99 or less.

Books from bookdepository.co.uk take 12 days to get here to Romania. For those of you in the US, there’s also bookdepository.com. Remember they offer free shipping on all books. It’s worth the wait if it’s a book you get for fun. But if you’re in the US and compare prices between bookdepository and Amazon, you’ll notice Amazon has better deals IF you spend over $25 and get free shipping.

Speaking of comparing prices, the best place to do that is probably

4. www.fetchprice.info

FetchPrice compares prices for new and used books from 145 book stores, among them all the Amazon country Web sites, Half.com, eBay, Alibris, AbeBooks, Biblio, and others.

Do note, however, that sometimes BookFinder gives erroneous information. I was looking, for instance, for a book published in Romanian, and BookFinder said it was printed in English. But look at the title, and you’ll find out the language, I guess.

7. Lendle

For those of you who love their Kindle but don’t want to pay $119 a year for Amazon Prime, there’s Lendle. Lendle is a place where you can lend and borrow Kindle books. The more books you add and lend, the more books you’ll be able to borrow.

8. Goodreads Giveaways

Goodreads posts prerelease books in their giveaway section every day, and hundreds of Goodreads members sign up for them. The giveaways have country restrictions; some are available only in the US, others only in the UK, some in both, others include Canada as well, while still others include a larger number of countries. As far as the number of copies that are available for each book, this can be 1, 2, 5, 10, 12, 15, 30, or any other number up to 50, from what I’ve seen. It’s a great way to get a free book, especially since they’re not on the market yet.

9. Blog and Ask for an Advance Reading Copy

A way to get advance reader copies (ARC), is to start a blog and get serious about writing book reviews and building a following. Once you have something to show (content and stats), you can contact a publishing house and mention your interest in getting ARCs.

Also, if you’re into ebooks, remember to ask your library about them. You will need to install an application on your iPhone, Android phone, iPad, Kindle, Nook, computer, etc.; the way I understand the borrowing works is that the file expires after a set time.

2. Check out local thrift stores

They may not have a whole range of books, but you may be surprised to find titles you would have never considered, some of them published decades ago.

3. Visit yard sales

I love the idea of yard sales. It’s such a great way for a community to help someone who needs to raise a certain amount of money, or simply to get rid of stuff which people in the community might be happy to pay for (for the joy of owning a particular item or selling it further).

4. Remember you can swap books while on holiday as well.

If you’re on holiday, your hostel or bed-and-breakfast may run a book exchange, where you leave one book and pick up another.

Well, that’s all from me for now on the topic of how to indulge your reading habit for less money.

If you have other tips, please share!

P.S. October 15, 2014. Now that I have bought a Kindle Paperwhite, I check Kindle Daily Deals regularly, sometimes daily. I have found great books that way, some of them literary fiction and others great fun. If you haven't purchased a Kindle yet, I recommend you do. The savings are worth it, and you also get to sample books which you wouldn't consider otherwise. I have read a lot of light fare of good quality (published in the last 2-3 years) for $1.99, and many books by literary greats also at $1.99.

Then there are Monthly Deals on Kindle, for $2.99 or less, usually.

Here's an article I wrote on pros and cons of reading on Kindle Paperwhite.

P.S. December 2020. I've been using BookBub for quite a while now and they offer impeccable service. There are many companies now that send out daily newsletters with book deals, but BookBub offers all the bestsellers along with many other prestigious books out there, all of them at great discounts ($1.99 and $2.99, mostly). Unfortunately this is not only a plus, as there are great indie titles too and they don't make it into BookBub newsletters, where promotion is quite costly. For indie titles and books from smaller publishers or publishers which run smaller promotions, I recommend Book Lemur, which also features many free books. BookBub does too, but ever more rarely now, and they've also started to feature more and more books at $2.99 rather than $1.99. Best thing to do: subscribe to both these book deals newsletter services!

I hope this has helped you find some new sources of book comfort! :) Enjoy your books and please share your own tips for finding good books at bargain prices.