Book Outlet Review: The Best Place to Buy New Books

If you’re looking to buy some new books but don’t want to pay a lot of money, then Book Outlet is for you! In this Book Outlet review, I am going to explain why their books are so cheap, talk about the perks of buying from them, and share my experience buying books from them.

I’m not sure why I didn’t know about Book Outlet before last year, but they are my favorite website to buy new books.

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Get $5 off your first order of $25 or more from Book Outlet!

What is the quality of their books?

The books that you can buy from Book Outlet are greatly reduced in price because they are purchased directly from publishers. Publishers often have excess inventory or books that have been returned. The quality of the books are still new, but Book Outlet is able to purchase them for a discounted price and then sell them for low prices to their customers.

Book Outlet has three different types of books that they offer: bargain books, scratch & dent books, & specialty products.

The type of book you purchase is stated before you buy it, so make sure you read the description.

Bargain Books

These are new books purchased from publishers that look new or almost new. You will typically find a small mark on the end of the book that marks it as excess inventory for a publisher (see the following picture for an example).

Sometimes they are hardcovers and sometimes they are paperbacks (they will specify which one).

They are 50% to 90% off the publisher’s price. For example, one of the books on my wish list is normally $18.99 because it is a newer hardcover book. On Book Outlet, it is marked down to $7.38.

Scratch & Dent Books

These are still new books, but they have a lot more wear on them and can be missing dust jackets. These books are purchased from publishers as they are typically excess inventory or store returns.

While there is more cosmetic damage, they are structurally sound, so they still make great reading.

These books are sold as is and cannot be returned.

Specialty Product Books

While these books are not as cheap as bargain books or scratch & dent books, they also are brand new with no marks on the ends.

These books are still offered at a reduced price. For example, they currently have some special editions of classics that are marked down from $17.99 to $7.38.

My experience with Book Outlet

I wanted to write this Book Outlet review because of how much I like them.

My first purchase

Last year I discovered them a couple weeks before Black Friday. I saw that they were having a big sale, so I decided to buy a bunch of books from them.

My purchase included 16 bargain books, and it only cost me $38.26. If you purchase $35+, you get free shipping, so that’s what I did. This made my books approximately $2.39 each, and they are all brand new and in great condition. A few were even hardcovers with nice dust jackets.

Quarantine buys

The second time I ordered books from Book Outlet was during quarantine. I purchased four books, and it cost $16.28. I had a $5 off coupon, so that basically paid for the shipping.

They weren’t quite as cheap as the ones from the Black Friday Sale, but they are still a great bargain for being new books.

How to save even more money

Besides Book Outlet’s low prices, there are ways to save even more money.

Markdowns & Clearance

They constantly mark down their book prices and have clearance books that you can buy.

One of the books I bought during the Black Friday sale was only $0.69 because it was on clearance!

Sales

Look out for their sales as well because you can save quite a bit with them. For the Black Friday Sale, it was 30% off your total order! They have been having 15% your order for the last few months, so now is a great time to check them out.

Coupons

One easy way to save money at Book Outlet is to earn rewards points and redeem coupons.

For every 100 points you have, you can get a $5 off coupon. There are several easy ways to earn these points:

Buy books—for every $2 spent, you earn 1 point
Take monthly loyalty quiz—every month you can earn 10 points for taking a short quiz
Refer a friend—you can earn 100 points every time you refer a new friend, and they purchase $25 or more (they also get a $5 coupon when using your link)
Sign up bonuses—there are a few things you can earn extra points for when you first sign up such as signing up for their newsletter and visiting their social media pages

If you haven’t shopped at Book Outlet before, you can use our link to get $5 off your first order of $25 or more.

What kinds of books can you find on Book Outlet?

Book Outlet is consistently adding new books to their website, so you should check back often. You can also get notified of books on your wish list coming in stock.

There are so many different kinds of books that you can buy on Book Outlet including adult, young adult, and children’s. There are many popular books on there, and you can even find box sets of books.

You can easily sort by author, genre, topic, price, arrival date, and more.