BTT: Something Old, Something New

It's Thursday, so that means it's time for another Booking Through Thursday prompt. This week, bloggers are asked:

All other things being equal–do you prefer used books? Or new books? (The physical speciman, that is, not the title.) Does your preference differentiate between a standard kind of used book, and a pristine, leather-bound copy?

I'm basically cheap. I prefer used books—second-hand, half-price, BookMooched, and swapped. Most books I'm only going to read one time, so if I read a used book, it has cost me quite a bit less. And, because I actively swap books, I pass along my books (after reading) to someone else.

When searching for the right link to use to Amazon's used book Marketplace, Google took me to a lot of sites—including Amazon—with information on selling and buying used textbooks. Which started me thinking about my textbooks back when I was a student. I always bought a new book if it was available, and I tried to sell my books back to the bookstore, griping about how little they were willing to pay me for my book. When it came to textbooks, I really didn't want any else's notes, highlighting, or underlining taking my attention from the text itself. And, I rarely marked in my books, so whomever was lucky enough to buy one of my second-hand ones got a good deal indeed.

I have a couple of books that I have tagged as “Permanent Collection“, but I haven't purposely bought brand-new books just because I plan on keeping them. The basic consideration is the condition of the book. And, I'm counting on being able to find another copy if I ever need to replace one of those books.

As I commented when I posted this link over at Booking Through Thursday, “For me, it’s all about the story, not the package that the story is in. I buy used in preference to new, and electronic if that’s cheaper than used.”