Where can I buy a bunch of classic books for cheap?
Asked by
dotlin (
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June 16th, 2010
I’m in the UK.
My local library doesn’t stock any of them :(.
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22 Answers
If you want to pay less than posted price, about your only choice may be a used book store. I love my local used stores – it’s like a treasure hunt.
If you have anything like Goodwill or the Salvation Army in the UK, I’d check there.
eBay.
Search for whatever you like, and include the word “lot”.
I guarantee you, you can find gazillions of classic paperbacks for next to nothing.
Half.com
Owned by Ebay, but not an auction site. Prices are set by the seller. The books are typically priced very low, depending upon the supply. Very wide selection, and you should be able to find some nice classics there.
Barnes and Nobles has editions of classics that are not under copyright that are quite cheap.
Amazon has selections by price of new and used books.
If you’re looking for a physical bookstore, try Half Price Books I don’t have a suggestion as I’m not in the UK.
If you’re okay with electronic versions of books no longer under copyright, try Project Gutenberg. (And their catalog is also available via iPhone apps, like Stanza).
i second the project gutenburg recommendation….available free online….massive amount of “classic” material….
no-one has mentioned oxfam’s chain of bookshops, all over the country i think, specifically set up to sell books, as distinct to oxfam’s clothes shops….there are 2 such in my city centre…
My fiancé lives in England and any books he cannot get at the library are purchased on Amazon.com. And what about boot sales? Are books sold there?
If you’re interested in just reading them, not collecting the paper book, Amazon’s Kindle store has buttloads of classics for free (or the occasional 99 cents) that you can download using Kindle for PC software.
@papayalily i know you can use the amazon’s kindle content on the ipad, though this isn’t free so not relevant?
@Pied_Pfeffer i would say yes you can pick up books at car boots, but in great quantities? probably not….
I can actually search my local libraries books online and get books delivered to them what I will do.
@tadpole I don’t know what the cost of using the Kindle store with an iPad, but I know I was reading the classics on my PC with their Kindle software several months before I got an actual Kindle.
What do you mean by “classic books”? Do you mean books by famous authors——like Dickens, Austen, Hemingway, Trollope? If so, the UK is stocked to the max with hospice shops that carry these. You can also go to ebay.co.uk and search “classic book set” and find something there, too. There are used book shops all over England and if you want to really find some good used bookshops go to London…or better yet, hit the Oxfam Bookshop at Oxford filled with good used bookshops and while there, go to Blackwell’s. Go to boot sales, too.
You can find books everywhere in England…and classic books, too.
I am a bibliophile and my problem in England is not in finding good books…it’s in figuring out where to put them all!
Best of luck.
The Goodwill Thrift Store here in Boston has been a great source of good books at almost embarrassing prices.
I’ve collected a lot from charity shops, other good places can be carboot sales and jumble sales where you’ll often find boxes of books to rumage though. You could also check libraries in other places (if you’re visiting for the day or similar) they sometimes have book sale shelves.
You could also try posting to your local freecycle / freegle to see if you could get them free!
@papayalily i think you can use the kindle store on the ipad via an app, it might even be free, and i think it applies to the iphone/touch as well…
lots of suggestions here for a country that is after all teeming with books and bookreaders…another suggestion: bookcrossing, one of a number of sites, but perhaps the best well-known, where the users/readers can send each other books, or leave them in certain public places…it’s generally used for moving books around, and globally, but you can hold onto books…you pick a book up, or get sent it, read it, leave a note etc then pass it on…
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