Review: Half Price Books of Everett, Washington

I live in Richland, Washington but I have family in Everett, Washington which I like to visit when I can. Half-Price Books has a branch store located at 1321 SE Everett Mall Way Ste 33534; this book store has become a must stop for me when I visit, both as a bookseller and as a book buyer. In this article I would like to expand on why I highly recommend this store, and the other book stores in this chain.

Half Price Books will pay cash for books
As a bookseller that only sells online, I regularly have inventory which doesn't meet my online requirements. One way to generate income from these book discards is to find a B&M (brick and mortar) book store that can use them and is willing to pay cash. In the used book market, fortunately, different book stores can have different niches and different customer bases. My B&M of choice is actually Hastings in Richland, however they have specific needs and can never use all of the extra books I have available. When I visit my brother's family in Everett, therefore, I like to bring several boxes of my book discards as a way to generate cash to cover the cost of my gas.

Half Price Books, as their price implies, sell their books on the basis of half the cover price. For that reason I've found that it isn't worth while to bring in older paperbacks with low cover prices. For a book with a 45 cent cover price, for example, Half Price would only be able to pay me a few cents. For older hardbacks without cover prices, however, there doesn't seem to be any exact amount they pay. The Half Price buyers working on my latest batch of books admitted that for these kind of books they "wing it" in regards to prices. As their customer base are walk-ins, as opposed to online, it makes sense they would use more of a gut-reaction/experience based way of pricing as opposed to looking everything up online like an online bookseller like myself would.

In an earlier visit, one Half Price buyer said that they will sometimes even take ex-library copies and copies with highlighting, but that it really depends on the title and whether or not they already had copies in nicer condition in the store. This was helpful to know and helped tailor what kind of books I would bother to haul over Snoqualmie Pass with me when I came to do a sell back in the store. In almost every case, I've found that adding on a bookselling visit to Half Price during a family visit was financially worthwhile.

Half Price Books has a wide range of inventory for sale, very responsibly priced
As a book buyer, I also enjoy visiting Half Price Books because of their pleasant, cheerful atmosphere and broad range of reasonably priced inventory to browse. (Though I'm primarily interested in books myself, they also sell used music, DVDs, VHS, magazines, and games.) As I noted earlier, most of their books are listed at half the cover price, but they also have regular sale and discount shelves and carts where you can find incredible bargains for $0.25 cents to $3. They sell books from a wide variety of genres and subjects, from non-fiction to fiction, with many shelves of paperbacks in the standard genres: romance, science fiction, westerns, and mystery. They also have a significant children's and juvenile section which my sister-in-law regular visits for her homeschooling needs. Unlike some used bookstores which specialize only in paperbacks, Half Price Books also has a large number of hardbacks for those readers wanting more durable copies of their favorite novels.

During a past visit, I asked the store clerk waiting on me how the store was doing during the economic downturn. She said Half Price was actually doing very well and in fact sales were booming. With the economy continuing to falter, more and more people are changing their book buying habits to purchase used books over new. She felt that many of the larger chain stores that specialized in new books were probably struggling, as more people were looking for more affordable sources of reading material and entertainment. (I would expect that public library use is markedly up for the same reason.) As I watched my sister-in-law check out yesterday, spending only $18.79 for 13 paperback childrens books, I can see for myself why people on a tight budget would want to shop there. Half Price Books truly is a blessing for the current frugal minded book shopper.

Note: Half Price Books currently has stores in 17 states. See the link below to see if there is one near you.