I just got back from New York and while unpacking, I stacked up the books I bought at retail. They included:
– Citizen Marketers – When People Are The Message by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba.
– Creating Customer Evangelists by Ben McConnell and Jackie Huba.
– Word of Mouth Marketing – How Smart Companies Get People Talking by Andy Sernovitz.
– A four CD set on public speaking (it’s in the car, so I don’t know the title offhand).
Good score. I’m happy with those results. Then I got an email blast from BookCloseouts.com. Here’s how the website describes what they do:
“BookCloseouts.com is one of North America’s largest sellers of Bargain Books. Bargain Books are new, unread books that the publisher sells-off in volume to reduce excess inventory. Sometimes the publisher printed too many copies, in other cases bookstores purchased too many copies and have returned them to the publisher for credit. The books therefore have been handled a few times but are still in excellent condition.”
I’ve used BookCloseouts.com many times in the past and I love this service – especially the prices. For some reason, they’ve been off of my radar for the past little while, but their purchase coupon in this email was pretty good (if you spend $100, you get $20 off – and they have discounts for smaller purchases as well).
What really freaked me out was some of the books I was about to buy in New York for full-price were now available at BookCloseouts.com. I managed to grab books like:
– The Corporate Blogging Book by Debbie Weil.
– Dealing With Darwin by Geoffrey Moore.
– Grapevine by David Balter and John Butman.
– Madison & Vine by Scott Donaton.
(click on the book title links above to see the BookCloseouts.com page with their prices – nuts).
I actually picked up seventeen books and the total amount (with discounts) was under one hundred dollars. Debbie Weil’s The Corporate Blogging Book retails for about twenty-five bucks and I managed to pick it up here for $5.99 (before the discount). That’s pretty amazing.
So, if you’re interested in the savings, let me know and I can send you the promotional codes to punch in (I am not an affiliate and I have no connections to BookCloseouts.com other than being a huge fan).
This really got me thinking about why anyone would purchase full retail price without checking out sites like BookCloseouts.com first? BookCloseouts.com is probably not doing the best job of promoting themselves, the website is a little tired from a design and usability stand-point, and consumers are probably skeptical about how the company can afford to sell books at such a deep discount.
Another tip would be to check out their selection of books on audio. I managed to score both The Cluetrain Manifesto and Seth Godin‘s Survival Is Not Enough on CD for under ten bucks each.
Happy Shopping.