Tl;dr — the price of good/acceptable condition mass market paperbacks on Thriftbooks and Amazon is too damn high.
One of my favorite things to do is find some random YouTuber who has an hour long video discussing all the books they read recently and get some good recommendations. Then I go and find the cheapest options for physical copies on Thriftbooks or Amazon and buy 5-10 of them.
I got to the end of a video just now of a guy recommending a horror novel I’d never heard of, Bad Brains by Kathe Koja. Sounded really good. Mass market paperback price on Thriftbooks is **$80.99.**
My Thriftbooks account history is full of purchases of 7-12 books at once that cost $27-35. But now, *those same books are $15+ ea*.
How is this possible? What is happening? If I were to repeat the same purchases from just 2 years ago, the $27 order would be $100+ and they’re all beaten up flimsy paperbacks with coffee stains, writing in the margins, dog-eared pages.
The site is called *Thrift*books. I literally went to a thrift store yesterday and they had hundreds of books on their shelves for $0.10/ea. I bought 20. They aren’t exactly what I was looking for, but decent condition books I’m happy to feature on my shelves. I ask again: what is happening with these online retailers?
by dunnsk