A few years ago my aunt, who lives in a small town outside of St. Catharines, Ontario, introduced my to a wonderful place: Book Depot.
From the outside it’s an unprepossessing one-story warehouse, and that would be a pretty good description of the inside as well, except. Books. 60,000 square feet of books, to be exact, on rough wooden shelves and tables. Aside from the “scratch-and-dent” section, all the books are new and in mint condition. And all for sale at bargain prices, because Book Depot happens to be one of North America’s largest “closeout/remainder” bookstores. A bibliophile’s dream.
Better yet, every year they have a Boxing Week Sale: half off everything in the store (hardcovers and trade paperbacks are usually $6.99-$9.99 the rest of the year.)
But - and here’s where the majority of people might be interested - they also have a website, BookCloseouts.com (unlike in the warehouse, all online prices are in US funds.) There’s some overlap between the retail and online inventories, but you can often find things in one that aren’t available from the other. Such was the case with the three books I ordered from the website on January 22. They arrived today. I bought Korea: A Walk Through the Land of Miracles (trade paperback) and The River at the Center of the World: A Journey Up the Yangtze, and Back in Chinese Time (trade paperback) by Simon Winchester, and Conrad’s Fate (hardcover) by Diana Wynne Jones. In total, they cost me $24.82: $18.47 + $3.95 shipping + $1.00 handling + $1.40 tax. And they arrived within four days.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some reading to do.
For people in Southern Ontario, retail store info:
Book Depot
340 Welland Avenue
St. Catharines, ON
L2R 7L9Monday-Wednesday: 9:00am - 5:00pm
Thursday-Friay: 9:00am - 8:00pm
Saturday: 9:00am - 5:00pm
Sunday: Closed
Carl V. wrote, on January 26th, 2007 at 1:54 pm: