Sounds like an obvious question, but with the price of books today you need to make some hard choices if you are interested in a particular subject or author.
Bookshops have become very expensive. Go into a bookshop and look at the prices. It’s a disgrace, mainly because of the customs and excise duties, and then another 15% charge for so-called value-added tax. Who can afford new books? Only people who are fanatical about books or need them for some particular reason.
What about online? Well, online is just as expensive when you take all the taxes into account and the mark-ups. But with online you can find books that are no longer being published, and second-hand books.
Second-hand bookstores have also become expensive. Just take a look at some of the prices in second-hand stores, and you’ll probably fall over backwards. But as I say, if there’s a particular book that you’ve been trying to get for some time, or really piques your interest, then this may be the place to buy.
Some charity shops offer books, and these may well be at bargain basement prices. However, the range is usually limited, and many of the books are old, meaning that the subject matter could be way out of date. But it’s always interesting browsing, and sometimes a book may leap out at you, and it’s exactly what you’ve been looking for.
One other place to look for books where they cost you absolutely nothing is your local library. Now, the problem is that most libraries have few books, because who knows where the money goes for buying books. Many books are not returned. I’m thinking of one library where about 50% of the stock has never been returned, so the range is limited.
But there are some good libraries still in certain provinces, and I found that at my local library they have a pretty broad range, and if they don’t have the book I’m after, they do an interlibrary loan, which takes a few weeks, but you eventually do get the book.
So the choice is yours. If you’ve got a tight budget, there are alternatives, but if you want to splash out on the latest, be warned about the hefty markups on new books, and the outrageous, in fact, iniquitous taxes that are levied on education and entertainment.
