From BookRiot:
Everyone—you, your grandma, your best frenemy—should buy used books. In fact, I will go so far as to say that everyone should buy used books as often as they can, reserving purchases of new paper books for special occasions, gifting, and those rare, delicious occasions when you get a gift certificate for your family’s particular gifty holiday.
The reasons transcend thrift! Everyone already understands that a $30 new book is at best prohibitive, at worst impossible. Buying used means more than the sticker price. It speaks to our humanity. It’s an act of social and economic heroism. It’s the way we all need to think from now on, not just for our personal bookshelves, but for how we view ourselves as readers, our critical thinking abilities, and our planet’s continued livability.
. . . .
A big box bookstore will never surprise you. You are not there to be surprised. Your only task while shopping is to walk the same track of customer behavior that psychologists determined 60-odd years ago to be profitable and predictable.
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The books that make you earn them come with an experience whose particulars a national chain can’t replicate. They don’t have to be rare or valuable for them to be technically hard to find and valuable to you. Have an adventure. Buy used books that require you to hunt them down.
This process is not only entertaining and empowering, but important to your continuing love of your quarry. Strolling into a big box and making an assured purchase is an easy-come, easy-go situation. Speaking as a librarian, I can assure you that my library alone receives hundreds of last-season bestsellers in donations every year.
. . . .
What you’re after when you buy a new book is a twofold experience: personal entertainment and collective participation. Considering the fact that library waitlists are a thing, we can boil much of new book desire down to expediency. This, my friends, is a dumb reason to use resources.
Right now, our planet in dire ecological shape partly because rich countries rely too heavily on manufacturing cheap, quick solutions for our needs, then throwing those solutions into landfills when we’re done with them. We need a mental revolution. We need to get into the groove of loving—and buying—used stuff, including books. Maybe it won’t singlehandedly save the world, but it’s one pellet in the silver buckshot that we need to save our climate and, ultimately, our world as we know it.
. . . .
Ebooks are a great solution, but not everybody has an ereader. I don’t believe in eco-shaming. You’ve got to do what you can.
Link to the rest at BookRiot
First, a reminder that PG doesn’t agree with every item he posts here.
Second, if the author of the OP was really interested in the planet’s health, she would have thundered on about ebooks and their benefits.
Every paper book, including almost every unsold paperback book at a bookstore (tear off the cover and throw them away is the most economical response from most publishers) is headed toward the landfill sooner or later.
As far as those people who can’t read ebooks because they don’t have an ereader, does your giftee have a tablet or a smartphone? That’s a perfectly reasonable way for most people to read an ebook.
If grandma doesn’t have an ereading device, the cost of acquiring one can be quickly recouped via the lower price of most ebooks (plus, of course, the priceless benefits to Gaia of not cutting down more trees, transporting them all over the place, etc.).
PG just checked and there is an all-new upgraded Kindle ereader available for $85 (plus, the owner receives a $5 Amazon credit when the device is activated). A Paperwhite (PG’s first and only choice for reading ebooks) is priced at $123.49.
Amazon’s 7-inch Fire tablet costs only $47.49 and, in addition to supporting ereading, includes Alexa, front & rear cameras, video, etc.
Looking at relative reading costs, the top-five hard-cover non-fiction Amazon best-sellers cost a total $55.17 and the top-five hard-cover fiction Amazon best-sellers cost a total of $67.45. (Of course, if you purchase these through your local bricks and mortar bookstore, you’ll pay much more than that.) So printed books look neither economical nor environmentally friendly.
Oh, and with an ereader or tablet, you can access ebooks from your library (at least in the US) at no cost and have them wirelessly delivered directly to your ereading device when they are available with no transportation, environmental or dollar costs involved in going to the library to check out physical books or sending grandma your used book.
And finally, depending on grandma’s age, if she’s over 40, she probably experiences symptoms of presbyopia (farsightedness) according to the Mayo Clinic.
PG would bet that most people with ereaders and presbyopia increase the size of the type on their ebooks to make them easier and more comfortable to read. Much nicer than using a magnifying glass or waiting for a five-pound large-print book from the library.
Actually, I got the free Kindle software on my computer. Amazon lets anybody download that software for free, and since I already have a computer for surfing the net, it cost me nothing. However, I still prefer to read ink on paper. Call me a Luddite, if you wish, but there is something special about a book.
By habit, I watch my pennies. My wife thinks I’m a crazy old miser. She’s probably right. When you grow up cleaning barns, you get that way.
I buy a lot of used books– paper and hardback– and I read a lot of eBooks. Used books in the markets I frequent are usually cheaper than eBooks. When all things are equal, I prefer to read eBooks rather than paper, mostly on a Msft Surface Pro tablet. We have several Kindles in the house; they are fine, but I get twitchy if my Surface is not within arm’s reach and its screen is phenomenal.
Parsimony partially explains why I read so much paper, but I also appreciate the OP’s sentiment and enjoy finding books from left field in used book stores, especially library book shops where the books are practically free. A friend picked up a genuine 9th edition Britannica in battered but readable condition for a dollar a volume at a library book shop last fall.
At the moment, all the eBooks in my reading queue are either from the library or from Project Gutenberg. I haven’t bought a new hardcover in years.
I buy used books when I want a paperback or hard cover for the contents. For some things, I’ll buy new because that’s what I want to feel, or for a gift.
And for everything else, there’s … ebooks!
Except when the ebook’s ridiculously priced – in which case, I hope for a cheap used copy as a matter of principle.
So many paper books got donated to the library sale or trashed when we moved to our permanent home (which has less space) that I’m extremely reluctant to buy more – and it isn’t necessary most of the time. Amazon seems to keep things neatly organized – and I even plan to delete most of the ebooks there because I’ll never read them again.
If Amazon goes out of business I’ll print out a list – and hope we still have libraries.
I suspect I’m not unique.
Agreed on ridiculously-priced ebooks, A.