So, this is a common question at the store... "What IS your trade-in
policy?" I will endeavor to outline the basics here. I know that it can
seem confusing and often it's just a matter of knowing that one book
sells well while another does not, but these are the basic criteria that
we go by. Of course, if there are more specific questions and whatnot, I
can certainly answer those.
First off... we sell our books for Half-Off the cover price. We then
give you Half of that (roughly 1/4 of the cover price) in store credit.
The standard is that you always receive, in store credit, half of what
we sell the books for.
For items such as Hardbacks, we sell them for Less than Half the cover
price (they simply don't sell well), but you still receive Half of
whatever we sell them for (We typically price them between $7 and $12 a
piece).
Occasionally, there are also some items that are priced well above their
cover indicates--this is most often because they are rare and
collectible. You still receive Half of whatever we sell it for, even if
we are going to sell it for $100--you then receive $50.
So if this is how we dispense store credit... how do we decide what we
can accept or not? The short answer is based on their Age, Condition,
and Whether we have them In Stock or Not. If you would like to know more
details about the process... please continue reading!
We do sort through the books that you bring in as quickly as we can, but
sometimes it can be a lengthy process as we really are looking for a
lot of things. The basic Three are a book's Age, Condition, and Whether
we have it In Stock or Not.
First thing that we do with every single book that comes into the store,
without exception, is to check it based on its Condition.
Second, we check it based on its Age and Thirdly, we find out whether we
already have it In Stock or Not.
*Condition
*Age
*Whether we have it In Stock or Not
Condition... a baseline for this is if we cannot sell it in the store,
then we cannot accept it for trade credit. What determines if we cannot
sell it? Well, the books should Not try to go swimming or be used as
coasters (no water damage) nor should they have entertained pets or
small children (no teeth marks, major rips, pages missing, etc). They
must have a cover and the bindings should be tight (or nearly tight). A
book with a broken spine is liable to start losing its pages after the
next read--thus we do not accept those. Hardback books must have their
dust-jackets.
Sidenote: If the box of books you've been meaning to bring in for months
upon months has been sitting in the garage the entire time... PLEASE at
least move them to a new box so that anything that made it's home in
the old one doesn't join us at the store. It's technically not a
*requirement* that anything is done with them, but if we are pulling
leaves, dead bugs, and spider webs off of books then they just don't
seem to be very clean anymore.
Age... we do wish that we could afford to keep every single book that
came through our store--both old and new. However, the new(er) books
simply sell better for us. Typically, we'd like the books that you bring
in to have copyright dates newer than the year 2000. There are, of
course, exceptions to that (This is where things get a bit trickier).
Also, we can only accept Current Year Fiction Hardbacks. The Hardbacks
simply do not sell well for us and they take up a lot of room on the
shelves. Naturally, things such as The Great Gatsby or Pride and
Prejudice are not subject to these cut-off dates. A lot of it simply
depends on us knowing which sections are selling well and which are
not... which authors sell well no matter their age and which sit on the
shelf forever... this does bring us to the next portion, though...
Whether we have it In Stock or Not... We are a little store, so we do
have to be careful that we don't take 5 copies of a single title.
Typically, we try to only take in 1 copy of a title at a time. If it has
been out for a while, we often wind up with more than 1 copy--but that
is why we begin with just a single copy. There are times that a book is a
HOT seller and we are asked about it long before we ever see a copy.
Those times we will likely take many copies of it (especially if we have
a Reserve list for it). There are also times that we've had to
discontinue a title (or author) for one reason or another--most often
because they haven't sold in more than a year. Those items, we really
cannot take any of.
Those are the Three basic criteria that we will check books for... yet
there are also some things that we simply do not ever accept...
We do Not accept:
Book Club Edition Hardbacks
Harlequin Romances
Books on Audio Cassette
Reader's Digest Editions
Textbooks
Movies
Music
If you happen to see one of these excluded items on the shelf, it does not mean that we have made special exceptions. Rather they were most likely items that we received at severely discounted rates (if not free) upon preparing to Open to the store.
