You Can Save a Lot of Money at Powells.com!
Written: Jun 09 '02 (Updated Sep 07 '02)
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Do you love books?
I love books, my whole family loves books. We buy a lot of books. Always looking to save a bit of money where I can, I've found Powells.com's used book offerings to be just right, under certain circumstances.
Yeah, we love books
Books. Books. Books. Gosh darn it, everywhere I look in my house, books. I'm typing out this Epinion in our small home office, surrounded by stacks of books. The two smallish bookcases in the room have long since overflowed, and now have books stacked in piles and piles on every side and on top.
The closet in the office (4th bedroom, actually) holds no clothes, just stacks of books I set apart from last summer's reading that I need to review on Epinions one of these days. The desk drawers have piles of books in them too, from another phase of reading, another set of books I'm meaning to review. The kids' bedroom, the kids' playroom, the middle bedroom, the master bedroom, all stacked with books. All of Don's books (he's the most voracious reader in the family), collect in the master bedroom, until the room can't hold them any longer, and then get piled in my office or the middle bedroom when I'm not looking.
My kitchen bookcase, surprisingly, is not overflowing with books; it is arranged just "so". That's because it contains a portion of one of my most prized possessions, my cookbook collection. The rest of my collection, sadly, is packed away in boxes, waiting for my kitchen renovation which will be designed first around my cookbook collection and second, around my small appliances.
The family room holds special piles of books, I call these the "active" books. I realized my children weren't reading enough because they were overwhelmed with book choices, making it easier for them to reach for a video game than settle on a book title. Each week now, I go through their books and pull out 20 or 30 that they can choose from this week and place them around the room, invitingly. 5 on the coffee table, a couple on the end table, a few collections on top of the TV. I've started putting my active selections out there too, to remind myself what caught my eye the week before that I didn't have time to read just yet. (Each week my cleaning lady scoops up my display and shoves them all into one pile in the corner, ticking me off majorly. I don't think the cleaning lady is a book lover or she'd show a little more respect for a person's active book display!)
We've each got books from lifetimes ago, and from last year and from last week. We hang onto these books, a brief selling phase on Half.com notwithstanding, occasionally pressing great paper bags full of paperback books on people who come in and out of our lives...but mostly, we stack our books up, we pile them up and we take joy in being surrounded by them.
We're book lovers.
Passion has a price
Don and I, quite honestly, have no idea how much we spend on books each month. He buys books real world, either at Barnes and Noble, Borders, or, gasp, Sam's (great hardcover deals there). I buy books online - Half.com, eBay, Powells, or, mostly, Amazon. I got into shopping Amazon very early in my Internet shopping career, and I enjoy shopping there. In, $100, out, fast. They've got my preferences and information stored and make it easy for me to load up my cart quickly. The faster I can shop the more I can buy and more is better, right?
Slow down and ponder "Where's my Frappuccino?"
Stepping onto Powells.com homepage is like stepping into a real bookstore. Powells comes by this ambiance naturally, being first and foremost a fine purveyor of books in the Portland, Oregon area since 1971.
Like any good brick & mortar bookstore, you can walk the aisles at Powells.com, drink in the culture, "talk" to the patrons, and get your money's worth without ever spending a dime. The only thing that is missing from the website is the coffee bar.
Here's what greets me on the front page today:
* An interview with Norman Juster, author of The Phantom Tollbooth, and one of a handful of authors from my childhood who are responsible for my frothing obsession with books. Norman Juster = Shakespeare to moi.
* Kid's Summer Reading List - just in time. I was thinking I had to build up the collection since summer is just upon us. Shel Silverstein hits the top of the list. Yep, these people are book lovers.
* "Great Deals on Really Good Books" Clicking the link, I'm greeted by alarmingly intellectual tomes "on sale" (just because I love books doesn't mean I'm that bright, for crying out loud). To my relief I see a Tony Hillerman for $7.95. Whew. Great Deals on Really Good Books for Dummies, too.
* Other Voices in Other Rooms - "Timely reviews and commentary, news, essays, interviews, book picks, links, and more from our section hosts."
And more. Managing so much content and still trying to sell books is a challenge, but the front page of Powells' does that, and pulls off "friendly" at the same time. Still, I'd like a frappuccino.
Ordering from Powells saves you money
Pay close attention. This part is important.
You can save a lot of money by taking the time to order from Powells, rather than going through Amazon or your local retailer. Powells sells used books as well as new. These used books come from the shelves of Powells physical bookstores, not individual sellers. Combine the used book prices with Powells' offer of free shipping on orders $50 or more, and a book lover has saved a serious chunk of cash.
Don discovered an older author that he hadn't read before and wanted to read more of, Richard Stark. (Stark is an alias of Donald Westlake, but that part's not important right now, huh.) Stark's books are short, and Don was complaining that they were all being re-released in literary paperback at 14 bucks a pop. I asked him to give me a chance to build him a Stark collection at a much better price, and he agreed.
Off to Powells I went.
Using the "used book search" I quickly assembled a shopping cart of 6 different Stark novels, mostly hardcover, averaging a price of about 6 dollars each. Oh, and, cough, a couple cookbooks for myself. (Hey! That was my finder's fee!) My order total came to just over $50.
Each book showed which store it was housed in, and even which aisle in the store, should I be near Burnside or Hawthorne and want to pop on over. To my recollection, my order involved inventory being shuttled about from 4 different bookstores to be fulfilled, and clicking "checkout", I marveled that I was getting such a deal with free shipping to boot.
What's the catch?
Well, my order took time. I didn't watch the clock or the calendar, but my order took time. Given the logistics involved in pulling my relatively minor order with free shipping together, I didn't expect it to take anything but time, but here's the corker -
They talked to me about my order all along the way.
First, I got my order confirmation. Then, I got a really nice, well worded email that I would swear came from a human being and not an automated response bot, that told me part of my order was delayed, immensely sorry, but they'd ship the books they had in their hands right way. Then, I got another nice email telling me what had shipped, and what was going to ship and when, and so on. I stopped counting nice emails, but there had to have been at least 5.
All told, it took about three weeks for my books to arrive in three or four different shipments, no shipping charge to me. If you've shopped Half.com or Amazon sellers, or even eBay, compare and contrast the efficiency of my used book ordering experience with no shipping charges , and you'll see why I'm sold on the value of Powells for used book purchases.
Oh, and the used books that arrived were spotless, in impeccable condition. Woo hoo!
Is Powells the One Way to buy books?
Powells hasn't yet replaced Amazon.com in my weekly or monthly new book buying routine. Amazon gets me in, gets me out, gets me product; Powells makes me want to sit down and drink coffee. As a veteran Internet shopper, I get joy from getting in and getting out of a site quickly, and I doubt I'm eschewing the Amazon habit tomorrow.
Powells has, however, replaced Half.com and Amazon sellers as my used book purveyor of choice. Powells removes the variables of dealing with individual sellers, and gives me free shipping and an interview with Norman Juster to boot. In time, and perhaps with a virtual frappuccino machine, the good folks at Powells might shove Amazon out of the way for my new book purchases as well.
Bottom line: If you are book lover, drive by http://www.powells.com and check them out for yourself.
Ooops. Gotta go. Just heard a crash in the living room. I told those children not to open that hall closet! Bet that was summer reading from 1998 that just spilled all over the place.
Recommended:
Yes
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Epinions.com ID:
pluckyduck
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Member: Andrea Barton Gurney
Location: Almost Philadelphia
Reviews written: 74
Trusted by: 295 members
About Me:
Gone fishing for awhile.
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