These Tips Will Ensure You Have Enough Money To Buy Children's Books

Children's books can be expensive, and many are age appropriate for only a few years. If you want shelves full of brand-new books for your children to read, you had better be ready to spend some serious dough. Many parents decide to buy children's books used because–as with children's clothes–they are quickly outgrown. Unfortunately, even when bought used, children's books can still be expensive. Hopefully, these tips will ensure you always have enough money to buy your kid's books.

1. Find Bulk Deals on Books

While you can get great deals on books at thrift stores and yard sales, you can get even better deals if you buy in bulk. See a box of gently used children's books at a yard sale? Instead of picking out a few at fifty cents apiece, offer them five dollars for the box. Check with your local library to see when they have their annual book sale. Often you can fill up a whole bag for a few bucks. Also check thrift stores in your area or when traveling. Many will offer bag deals that will allow you to get as many books as you can fit in a plastic grocery bag for $3-7 dollars. Even if such a deal isn't posted, ask if they ever hold such a sale.

2. Buy Books to Use and Trade

So you've found a bag sale. Make the most of it. Start with getting your bag. Not all bags are created equal. If the sale has a box of bags for you to serve yourself, take a couple seconds (not minutes) to look through the box. Plastic bags from restaurants and clothing stores are bigger. If the sale offers you a large paper bag for a couple bucks more, the paper is usually a much better deal. Grab two bags and start filling.
There are a lot of great children's books out there. You can afford to be picky.

However, at a bag sale, it is unlikely that you will be able to fill your bag with books you want. I rarely find more than five books I want to keep. So what to do with the rest of the space in your bag? Buy books that other people will want.

Start with the children's section because that's what you came there for anyway. Look for anything in reasonably good condition by Disney, Boynton, Carle, Curio's George, Beginner Books (Cat in the Hat logo on spine), or anything with a Movie/TV connection. Look also for board books in good condition, especially if they have some unusual (and undamaged) feature.

In the hardcovers, don't buy anything without a dust jacket in reasonably good shape. Also, don't buy anything that is a book club edition. These editions are slightly smaller and virtually worthless (however, some authors like Nicholas Sparks write shorter works that are always published in this size). As a general rule, never buy a book that was withdrawn from library circulation (contrary to popular opinion, library sales are usually comprised mostly of donated books rather than withdrawn books). Nonfiction hardcovers will generally be your most valuable finds, but there's a fickle art to picking out the right ones.

3. Trade the Books You Don't Want

Take your unwanted books to a used bookstore. Since most towns have more than one, go to the one with the nicest selection first. They probably won't take all the books you bring them. Take the rejected ones to the next nicest etc.

This year I've bought four bags of books at a cost of $16 (two for $3 each, two for $5 each). In the four bags, I got about twenty books I wanted (at less than a dollar per book). In addition, I got about $100 worth of trade credit at local bookstores.

Of course, most towns also have well stocked public library, but a personal children's library can be a great help in teaching your children to love reading.