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Mar. 6th, 2010
Minor rant: On buying used books
Mar. 6th, 2010 11:37 pmI've done a bad, bad thing: I know that because of the kerfuffle with Amazon over the fact that they temporarily stopped carrying books published by MacMillan, due to a mess involving electronic book rights, I deleted the link to my Amazon review page from this journal. And I stopped buying used books from Amazon, but... I caved in and bought a used copy of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "Sonnets from the Portuguese" for a penny, which arrived in the mail yesterday. It's a matter of principle with me: roughly a third to a half of the books I buy are used. I've even been screamed at by one author, via Twitter (who will remain nameless, but several of the ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
carpe_ho_ras have heard the story and know who I mean), who somehow got it into their that this meant I was buying this writer's books used and therefore denying them their royalties. Mind you, if a book has recently been published, I'm likely to buy it new from Barnes & Noble or Target or Wal-Mart even. However, there are a lot of books that are hard to find unless you get them used, and I have to admit, I'm not patient about pre-ordering books from B&N, even though I love using their Store Pick-Up option. Not sure why I do this, but it's a personal quirk. Anyway...
But there is something to be said about buying used books: it's a form of going green. It is the equivalent of adopting a pet from a shelter instead of going to a breeder or a pet store. You are taking a book that could very well wind up in a landfill or a recycling bin and giving it a new home where it can continue to enchant and delight its readers. I have to admit to liking used books: some of them I can tell were well-loved volumes, and I've even picked up flashes of energy from some books. We've got this leather-bound copy of John Greenlead Whittier's "Snowbound" which is missing the spine but the pages are still together (my dad picked it up at a yard sale and gave it to my mom and I on the First Day of Winter this past December as a "Happy Winter" present); it appears to be from the 1870s and it's clearly been read a few times and yet was still taken good care of. I was reading it one night and I got this flash of an older man, maybe in his sixties reading it about the turn of the 20th century and talking to his grandson about how winters used to be when he was a kid about the grandson's age. Granted, I've picked up some old books that contained a lot of negative energy as well, and I've even sensed what felt like pain coming from damaged books, so sometimes recycling a book is an act of mercy. But for the most part, most used books are like shelter dogs waiting for a good home and greeting you with a wagging tale, eager to create new memories...
carpe_ho_ras have heard the story and know who I mean), who somehow got it into their that this meant I was buying this writer's books used and therefore denying them their royalties. Mind you, if a book has recently been published, I'm likely to buy it new from Barnes & Noble or Target or Wal-Mart even. However, there are a lot of books that are hard to find unless you get them used, and I have to admit, I'm not patient about pre-ordering books from B&N, even though I love using their Store Pick-Up option. Not sure why I do this, but it's a personal quirk. Anyway...But there is something to be said about buying used books: it's a form of going green. It is the equivalent of adopting a pet from a shelter instead of going to a breeder or a pet store. You are taking a book that could very well wind up in a landfill or a recycling bin and giving it a new home where it can continue to enchant and delight its readers. I have to admit to liking used books: some of them I can tell were well-loved volumes, and I've even picked up flashes of energy from some books. We've got this leather-bound copy of John Greenlead Whittier's "Snowbound" which is missing the spine but the pages are still together (my dad picked it up at a yard sale and gave it to my mom and I on the First Day of Winter this past December as a "Happy Winter" present); it appears to be from the 1870s and it's clearly been read a few times and yet was still taken good care of. I was reading it one night and I got this flash of an older man, maybe in his sixties reading it about the turn of the 20th century and talking to his grandson about how winters used to be when he was a kid about the grandson's age. Granted, I've picked up some old books that contained a lot of negative energy as well, and I've even sensed what felt like pain coming from damaged books, so sometimes recycling a book is an act of mercy. But for the most part, most used books are like shelter dogs waiting for a good home and greeting you with a wagging tale, eager to create new memories...