4 ms·
I would encourage people to support ThriftBooks. Used to compete against them when running KudzuBooks.com. Kudzu went bankrupt shortly after owner sold Academ
by beauzero 8y ago
I would encourage people to support ThriftBooks. Used to compete against them when running KudzuBooks.com. Kudzu went bankrupt shortly after owner sold AcademicBookServices.com (used K-12 books) to Follett's used k-12 division. ThriftBooks has been around since the Kudzu days and have continued to run a tight ship and improve their site with little to no resources. It's good to see them around. Margins in the remainder business are extremely tight and it is difficult to get good remaindered stock with the consolidation of publishing houses and the closing of so many bricks and mortar stores. Remaindered book = book returned to the publisher who puts a black mark somewhere on the loose page ends and resells to bargain market (usually wholesalers) at 5-15% of retail price. They in turn get resold to brick and mortars for bargain book tables or online (should be sold "Like New" but some are sold "New" if the publisher forgot to mark the book).
- bogomipz 8y agoRelated question - are review copies considered "remaindered"? There's a store in NYC called Strand Books that is notable in it sells new hard cover releases priced about 5 to 10 dollars less than the cover price. The condition however is perfect on all these. I always suspected these were review copies.
- chasingthewind 8y agoI just went to check out thrift books and found something surprising. I looked up an old childrens book that’s an old favorite of mine and saw a review that looked really familiar and triggered something in my mind. I went over to Amazon and found the exact same review...word for word. I wonder what’s going on here...does Amazon sell review text to other vendors? Is there a public API for reviews that other sites can use?