Buying Used Books is Better Than Buying New
Whether you are looking for something new to read or fillers for your bookshelf, buying books can become expensive quickly.
I always have a list of books I want to read in the back of my head, and when I visit a bookstore, I look for those books first before perusing. Though, as a college student, my wallet suffers from my book-buying habits. Buying used books lets me continue my passion, while not letting me go bankrupt.
The average-sized paperback novels in the United States cost $13 to $17. Meaning, if you buy more than three books, you could be spending upwards of $50! Used books are a fraction of that price, allowing you to add even more books to your collection.
Not only do you save money by buying used books, but you are also giving life to a once loved object. Whether that book was carefully handled or loved to pieces, you will be able to love that book in a new, special way.
Audrey Heffelfinger, an English education major at Colorado State University comments, “I buy used books mostly because they’re cheaper. I feel better about buying used books when I’m shopping on Amazon because I know that they have been owned before, rather than created by Amazon.”
Audrey is an avid book reader and lover, “I love finding the copy of a book that I was looking for. It’s usually much cheaper than online, and I love looking through used bookstores.”
Buying used books opens a whole new world of different genres and opportunities to find something you love. You have the opportunity to find a book that not many people have heard of, discover a new genre or even rediscover a favorite book from your childhood.
Have you ever looked up a book you wanted on Amazon, only to find out they only had that crappy copy that has a picture of the live-action movie/tv series on the cover? Well, at a used bookstore, there could be a plethora of different covers to choose from. Anna Gooding-Call from Book Riot writes that a book with your chosen cover “will be special to you for much longer because it was worth your time and effort.”
Getting the book you want used is also very beneficial to the environment. Thrift Books says that about “2 billion new paper books [are] produced in the United States every year.” It’s hard to fathom how much waste that creates. Buying used books helps decrease the amount of waste produced.
So before buying that new book on Amazon, try to find it at one of your local bookstores. The Bizarre Bazaar in Old Town, Fort Collins seems to always have the books that I am looking for. And when I can’t find my book there, Thrift Books has never let me down.
Save the environment, shop local, and feed your book-buying habit by shopping used.
