Book prices

This week's Booking Through Thursday is:

Does the price of a book affect your decision about buying it? Do you wait for cheaper editions of books you want?


For me, yes, definitely. I've never had much money spare, so price is one of the first things I look at when buying anything. If it's a relatively new second-hand book, I limit myself to about £3 each (sometimes a bit more if it's a very long book - it feels like better value somehow, even though I know words don't really work that way). If it's an old edition (1940s or older counts as old for me, and a nicely bound edition is a bonus) then I will consider paying more, up to about £10 for a particularly beautiful edition of something 100 years old or more. Of course, if I found a first edition or one signed by the author then I'd be prepared to give much more for it. 

I generally don't buy new, freshly printed books unless I have a gift voucher, or if they're very cheap. That said, if it's one of the few currently writing authors that I really love, I'll pre-order their novels on Amazon, which works out cheaper than chain bookshops and means I get sent them as soon as they're released. Annoyingly, the letterbox in my current place is too small to fit hardbacks through, which means walking out to the postal depot to rescue my new editions from the clutches of the Royal Mail.