Hmmm, so I'm back home after quite a long day. Like I said in my other post, I went to the UBS... but I also stopped at three other bookstores - another UBS (same franchise) and two regular bookstores (Chapters and Indigo - they had their 25%off sale).
Of course, that means I got some new treasures... which I'll share tomorrow or during the week.
Right now, I want to discuss UBS and books... So Kristie had this post about Keeper Books vs Keeping Books. Not long ago, Wendy had a post about your buying books habits... well now, I have questions about your purging books habits :)
How often do you purge your books? Once a year? Once in a while? Once every season?
What do you do with them? UBS? Paperswap? Charity?
If you bring them to the UBS, how much to you get for them?
I'm being curious and noisy, but I can't help it. See, I purge my books... at least once a year, usually when I re-shelve them. However, I don't really know what to do with them. I've been contemplating the options (limited) and none were too appealing. I considered charity (the McGill bookfair)... but then, yesterday, I thought if I could get some money out of them, I should right? So I brought my books to the UBS today.
The good news? I brought 144 books and they only rejected 2. I was a bit worried they wouldn't take any because I had a lot... and then, the lady told me they were very picky. Turns out they were picky about conditions... and a lot of them were pristine, I mean, like new - actually, many haven't been read. So I'm 142 books lighter! Not bad right?
The bad news? Euh, I got 50$ for 142 books... and there were a couple of hardcovers in that mix. So yeah, if you do quick calculations, I got 0.35$/book. Seriously?!? That's simply ridiculous and seriously, not worth it. I know, money is not everything and hey, I wasn't expecting much... but I bought 15 books at the UBS and I ended up owning them 20$. So let see, I sold 142 books for 50$ --> 0.35$/book and bought 15 books for 70$ --> 4.66$/book. I think someone's getting cheated/screwed/taken advantage of. Or someone else is making some profit. Or is it me?
When I went to the UBS in London, Ontario... Kristie told me they bought books at 25% cover price and sold books at 50% cover price. That actually makes a lot of sense to me. Ah well.
So yeah, I just don't it's really worth it ^_^; So I'm thinking of finding another option for the next purge... Any suggestion? I was thinking the best would be finding someone in Montreal and just outright exchanging books... and I didn't really consider the Internation Paperswap (can't remember how it's called), but now, it looks really attractive.
So that's it for now...
