Half Price Books

An Amazing Bookstore

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One of the many alcoves at Blue Jacket Books, an amazing store in Xenia, Ohio

Have you had the experience of discovering an amazing bookstore, one that seemed to have any book about anything? There seemed to be miles of shelves, cubby holes where you could curl up with a book, and great bargains on remaindered books–ones you wanted to read when they were full price, except you hadn’t gotten around to it.

In a Literary Hub article I discovered that we have James Lackington to thank for all of this. Lackington opened a store in 1774 in London that revolutionized bookselling to this day. His store, The Temple of Muses, eventually stocked 500,000 volumes. He bought large quantities of remaindered titles and, instead of destroying most of them to drive up the price, he passed the savings on to customers. He had four floors of books with “lounging rooms” for customers. It sounds like it was an incredible place.

I remember my first visit to a Borders store while we were house hunting in Columbus. This was when they were still owned by the Borders brothers. I couldn’t believe the depth of selection in each topic area, there was an amazing sale table, and lots of places to sit and browse your finds, as well as a cafe so that you could do it all drink in hand. All the things Lackington figured out made a great bookstore were present.

Now Borders is gone. There is only one major brick and mortar bookseller to speak of. More and more, the selection is limited to either the most significant or most current books in a genre. The only “everything” store is online. But there are still some great stores around the country such as Powell’s or BookPeople who still approximate this ideal. And the second hand stores, particularly some of the Half Price Books stores provide the opportunity for finding great bargains and unusual books. There are some independents as well, some in out of the way places like Blue Jacket Books in Xenia, Ohio that approximate this ideal.

I find myself wondering if a generation from now, people will still have the jaw-dropping experience of walking into a huge bookstore that seems to stock everything, where there are miles of aisles and shelves to explore on every conceivable topic. I also wonder if we will foster a culture that values such places. But there is the wonderful experience of finding your favorite section, and leisurely reading down the shelves of books and making those serendipitous finds that a logarithm or a heuristic might not predict because it only goes off your past history, and not your future interests, the ones that may be awakened by a title, a book cover, or a table of contents. It is a cultural good I hope we do not lose.

I do feel fortunate because in our city, Columbus, while we don’t have any “temples” to books, we have some pretty interesting stores. Some, like the Book Loft in German Village, with its 32 rooms over a couple floors, or the Half Price store on Lane Ave that sprawls and winds through a couple connected buildings get kind of close to Lackington’s ideal. A while back I wrote a post about bookstore crawling in Columbus. If you ever come through, I hope you will come visit some of my favorite places and help keep them alive!

I’d love to hear about your amazing bookstore experiences, so I can visit if I ever come through your town!

Bookstore Review: Half Price Books Online

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New Used Books Textbooks Music Movies Half Price Books

Screenshot of HPB.COM taken 7/12/16

I’ve been a customer of Half Price Books going back into the 1990’s. They have six stores in my city and we’ve been to them all. They are the source of a number of the books, vinyl, and CDs we’ve purchased, and also a place where we’ve sold these items. Recently, I’ve received emails about their online bookstore, HPB.COM, touting a “new” online presence.

This makes sense of some things we’ve seen in their physical stores. It used to be that all you saw on merchandise was a little price sticker. Increasingly, these have been replaced with barcode labels, with adhesive that makes them not easy to remove at times (a subject for a separate post sometime!). Essentially, with the right IT work, this creates the capacity for them to have over 120 warehouses scattered across the country, and to be open to book buyers from everywhere, all the time, and not just those who walk through the door. If Amazon is indeed getting into the brick and mortar book store business, Half Price, one of the more successful brick and mortar sellers, is going after the online market.

So how have they done? Here are some of my impressions as I’ve looked around the website. First of all, when one goes to the home page, you are welcomed to the “new HPB.COM.” As you mouse over this you can “start shopping” immediately or move the banner to the right or left and see other featured promotions going on either online or at their stores, including their current city-wide clearance sales. Clicking on “start shopping” takes you to featured best sellers of the week, new releases, rare finds, staff picks, books made into movies, and a special HPB collection, which has changed at least once already today. You can also scroll down the home page to see boxes featuring bestsellers, various news items about Half Price Books, staff picks, and more.

Across the top of the page is a drop down menu bar allowing you to go to various pages for books, movies and TV, music, textbooks, rare finds, as well as a “gift card” and an “about” page. Each of the first four drop downs provides links to popular categories, customer favorites, and “superbuys” by price. Just below that menu bar is a search box that allows you to search for a particular title or category.

And this is where it gets interesting because it will give you a featured search result and price, usually for a Half Price store somewhere in the country, and then below, a “marketplace” that includes other places where the item is for sale, not only other Half Price outlets, but also other online “third party” sellers. Prices can sometimes be very low, less than $1, depending on the book, but you should be aware that there is a $3.99 shipping fee for each item, plus sales tax if you are in a state where Half Price does business. Even so, it may be possible to find things at a lower price than at other online sellers, but I would compare, and look at user ratings.

One feature I wish the site had that I could not find, even though I searched for my favorite local store, was the capability to find out if the item was at that store. You can if you scroll down a list of all the available items but you will not be taken there directly. What you can do once you locate your local store is find out about events, staff picks, meet the manager, and more, which is a nice feature.

I did not find anything here that made this my “go to” site for buying books online. But I should add the caveat that I really prefer brick and mortar stores in most instances. I would also say that HPB.COM needs to do work on its connection with Google searches. For example, I searched a book I recently received, Silence and Beauty by Makoto Fujimura. It can be found on the HPB.COM site but searching online it does not show up on the first five pages of a Google search, where it is listed with a number of online sellers as well as at the publisher’s site. Even adding the term “Half Price Books” or “HPB” will only take you to the HPB.COM homepage.

My sense is that the industrious and adventuresome will find some good deals here, and hopefully have a good customer experience. I do think it is an interesting site to see what others are writing about books, including current bestsellers or new releases. Having watched Half Price over 20 years, it also wouldn’t surprise me that they continue to enhance this site. But I think I will continue to do my own book-buying at my local favorite HPB, or at a handful of other local or out of town bookstores I order or purchase from, along with using Amazon for something I need quickly. But that reflects as much as anything my love for the serendipity of visiting a store and finding something interesting that you weren’t looking for. But I’ve bookmarked the site–and you never know!

Have you ordered from HPB.COM? What was your experience?

 

So Where Do You Find Those Books You Review?

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Someone asked this question on a recent post, and I don’t think I’ve ever talked about this directly.  Finding books that interest me has never been a problem, in one sense. Finding time to read all the books I’m interested in is probably the challenge–and keeping up with other important things in life. But learning about my sources might be interesting for others, so here goes:

1. My most tried and true way of finding books is simply the local second hand bookstore (in our case, Half Price Books, of which there are several outlets in my home town). Often I do not go there looking for a particular book. My usual practice is that I have several sections (science, fiction, history, and religion) in which I particularly look. I also check out the bargain section–I’ve made some great finds of books I was interested in that I picked up for a song.

2. Of course, these trips are supplemented from time to time with library book sales and visits to other book stores.

3. I also attend some conferences related to my work. There is often a book table with books related to the conference theme and our broader work. Many of the academically oriented books, and those on higher education come from these book tables.

4. The organization I work with has a publishing house, InterVarsity Press. You may notice that a fair number of the books reviewed here come from them. We have the option to purchase new releases at a steep discount, and receive complimentary copies of some books related to collegiate ministry. I read these books because they deal with issues I’m interested in, often quite well. When that’s not the case, I feel free to say so. I am paying for most of those books, even if they are at discount!

5. Some of my books are e-books and I learn of these through three sources: Amazon via their Kindle Daily Deal emails, BookBub, which also emails about daily deals, and NetGalley, which is a website where bona fide book reviewers (in print or on blogs) can request e-galleys of new releases in exchange for posting reviews not only on their own sites but on NetGalley’s site, which provides feedback to publishers. Big danger here is that in the ease of downloading to a reader, you will acquire far more than you can read.

6. I follow reviews of others on Goodreads, in Books and Culture, the New York Times Book Review, First Things, and other periodicals that include reviews. Hearts and Minds Books “Booknotes” is another great source. I often look more at reviews than articles in some journals. Then I keep an eye out for a good deal on the books I’m interested in.

7. One of the things I’ve begun doing is requesting review copies of books I’m interested in reading and reviewing. Review copies are furnished at no cost but involve the commitment to read and review the book often within a 30 to 60 day period, send a copy of the review to the publisher that they can re-post, and to post a review on commercial media like Amazon. So you need to be a legit reviewer with a review platform like a blog. I suggest being sparing in your requests so that you can honor your commitment to review the book in a timely fashion.

8. Occasionally a book will be an “assigned” reading for work purposes. My usual reaction is, “Oh boy–I can even justify reading as a work-related activity!

9. Every so often, I stop by our local library. They have a section with their new acquisitions and this is one more way to learn about recent publications in areas of interest.

10. Finally, there are those books friends suggest or even give you and tell you you “HAVE” to read. I will if I’m interested. My son is a source of a number of these, and thankfully, he knows enough about my propensities to buy stuff that I actually AM interested in!

So there it is. Those are some of the ways I find out about books, and find the books I review. As I said, this has never been a problem in my “bookish” world. But maybe some of these ideas will connect you with new sources of learning about good books. Hopefully, it doesn’t open up new avenues of temptation!

 

The Uber Used Book Store

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The uber used book store? What am I talking about? It’s the store probably responsible for at least a third of the books in our house, and for passing along our book-buying habits to our son, (which his wife may or may not think is a good thing!). What am I talking about? Half Price Books of course.

Half Price Books Logo

Half Price Books Logo

Half Price Books has five stores in the Columbus area, three of which we visit fairly regularly (Carriage Place, Lane Ave., and Graceland, in that order). The chain, like so many used book stores, had its start as a single store in Dallas, TX in 1972, taking over a converted laundromat (information is from their website).  Also like many used book stores, this one began when Ken Gjemre and Pat Anderson stocked the store with books from their own libraries.  They started with the simple idea of selling books (and eventually movies, music, and games) at 50% or less of retail. This idea, and I’m certain a lot of entrepreneurial work, has propelled them to a chain of stores numbering 115 in 16 states.

Carriage Place Half Price books (our favorite). From: http://www.hpb.com/040/

Carriage Place Half Price books (our favorite). From: http://www.hpb.com/040/

Half Price books says it gets about half of its stock from its customers. They also say they will buy anything printed or recorded except for yesterday’s newspaper. We’ve found that to be true and they have been a great place for us to recycle books and other media we no longer want and can’t find others to give it to. That said, the one caveat is that you may sometimes get a better price for particular books at other stores, if it is something they want. But I haven’t found any other place that will take whatever you bring and re-sell or recycle it and give you something, usually store credit, for your stuff.

In part, this post is inspired by the fact that Half Price Books is currently having one of its regular coupon sales. You can sign up to receive emails about these and other events at their website. A couple years ago I found Raymond Brown’s box two volume work The Death of Jesus the Messiah, and with a 50 percent off coupon picked it up for $15 (it retails at $60). Recently, they have also begun holding massive clearance sales at a central location (our state fairgrounds hosted one recently). We’ve not been to one of these, but everything is $3 and under. Another used book store owner I talked to recently admitted to going to one of these to pick up stock.

Mowinckel

Mowinckel

What I’ve liked about Half Price Books is the range and depth of material you can find. It isn’t just the most popular stuff. This past week, I picked up a hardbound copy of Sigmund Mowinckel’s The Psalms in Israel’s Worship, a landmark work on the Psalms published in 1962, for a mere $5. Sometimes I find the most amazing stuff in their bargain shelves where nothing costs more than $2. I found a copy of Mark Schwehn’s Exiles from Eden, a book I’d wanted on religion and higher education, on one of these shelves.

I have to say, we’ve had a nearly twenty year history with Half Price Books in our area, and I really can’t find anything bad to say about them, other than the fact that they’ve tempted me to buy more books than I probably should have. These days, I mostly limit visits there to the sales and try to sell them more books than I buy. If you don’t live in a location that has one of their stores, you should check their locations and make sure to visit one when you travel, unless you are seriously resisting the temptation to buy books!

“So Where Do You Get All These Books?”

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That’s a question my friends ask when they visit our home–and perhaps they are trying to tell us something.  Truth is, we probably have enough books around the house to take care of our reading needs for the rest of our life!  I found some comfort from Winston Churchill, who said something to the effect of “don’t feel bad about the books on your shelves you haven’t read, just fondle them!”  Part of what he meant was that it doesn’t hurt to just page through some of our unread books to be familiar with what is in them–you never know when that might become relevant.

A major source of the books around our home is InterVarsity Press.  I work as a staff director with InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, their parent organization and so I am the recipient of some complimentary books and other highly discounted new releases.  InterVarsity Press publishes books that relate closely to our work in the university world, addressing issues of the day and matters of spiritual formation from a thoughtful and biblical perspective.  You will see reviews of a number of their books because, professionally they relate closely to my work in collegiate ministry, and personally, I’ve appreciated the thoughtful writing and the willingness to tackle hard issues.  That doesn’t mean that all my reviews will be glowing, however!

Another source of books around our home are the numerous used book stores around Columbus.  Of these, Half Price Books has probably made the most significant contribution.  They have five locations around our city (and we’ve visited them all!) preferring the Carriage Place and Lane Avenue locations.  I love to explore the $2 section, where there is lots of trash, but often a few “treasures”.  Another store we periodically frequent is The Village Bookshop in northwest Columbus.  Located in an old church building, they have childrens books, lots of used and remaindered books and an old book room upstairs (be sure you go upstairs).  A new find for us is Acorn Bookshop in Grandview Heights, just west of Ohio State.  The proprietors love talking with customers about books and I suspect a few more items from their store will eventually find their way to our home!

Some of the other miscellaneous sources of books over the years are our local Friends of the Library book sales–dangerous because you can acquire so much so cheaply, booktables at conferences–I have a “buy only one book” rule these days, and the used bookshops in other cities.  I’ve enjoyed some great ones in or near State Street in Madison, a now closed store off the beaten path between Ashland and Wooster, and a now closed store in my home town of Youngstown known as Twice-Loved Books.

Since my son gave me a Kindle a couple years back, I now get more of my books as e-books.  There are a number available for free and many titles are periodically discounted to under $3.  I’ve found the Englewood Review of Books one good source for information about thoughtful Christian works available at good discounts. Amazon is also my “go to” place (other than my local library) when there is a book I need for something I’m working on.

In a future post, I will talk about my increasing need to purge my shelves and how I’m thinking about that as I grow older.  For now, I’d love to hear from others about their favorite sources of books, and also their ideas of “downsizing” their collections.