Hello everyone,
I am working to revitalize our church's library and will soon be purchasing a lot of new books to fill our shelves. I was wondering if any of you have ever had any success with asking publishers for a church library discount if you purchase a large amount from them. I am considering approaching small faith-based publishers such as The Good Book Co, Reformation Heritage Books, and New Growth Press with this request. There are a large volume of titles from each of these publishers that I would like to aquire. I have about a 3k budget to work with (praise God!), but I know that can drain quickly when purchasing a lot of books.
Also, I know that I will have church members who would love to purchse books from a "wish list" for our library. To keep things simple, I am considering creating an Amazon wish list for this purpose. However, I am wondering if there might be a cheaper or better way to do that. Has anyone done something like this? I am trying to steer our library away from being the dumping ground for everyone's used books, but also allow church members to contribute to building our collection back up.
Thanks in advance for any insight you can provide.
Replies
What a blessing. One thing I'm watching this year is copyright dates. When I say we have a new book I'm making sure it's a "new" book.
You can also create a wish list on Christian Book Distributors. It would be for your use only. I use it for books I may want to buy later.
For those who have tried to download my article.
Hopefully others will see this:
For some reason Purdue has the article I mentioned available for download in 2 places; and also two links to the magazine in which the article is supposed to be in. I've not been able to fix this, and here are two good links for the downloading of the same article...one of which is what Patty has shown.
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg/vol14/iss4/23
http://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg/vol4/iss4/51
Purdue sends me information monthly about how many downloads there have been and from what countries and areas the downloads are made. The downloads in the two links total 463, but do not show what their emails tell me.
In anycase, I hope the article is useful in some way.
I'm not sure this item is included in the article. I was able to get half-price, The New Interpreter's Commentary of the Bible (12 volumes,) 2008, at the Special Libraries Assoc. annual conference, where I spoke. The vendor was showing at the conference, and when I got there to see him, he was packing up. Not wanting to ship them back 'home', he offered the set for $500 (listed at the time over $1,000) and also included their CD-ROM, another $150 plus. I'm thinking (without being able to check the church library) there were fewer volumes than the 12 volume older set.
So, It is possible to get some of the larger, new, reference sets at discount at conferences if you ask.
I just compare prices between ChristianBook.com (frequently offers free shipping and %-off sales) and Amazon. Sometimes I think about doing pre-orders with publishers but then I remember I have to submit tax-exempt paperwork for each company, so I generally just find myself back at the other two previously mentioned. If it's an older book I'm searching for, I also hunt Biblio.com for it because sometimes a copy in Very Good or better condition is on sale by a bookstore and it ends up cheaper than Amazon. Does your church have a Business Prime account? Those accounts are difficult to beat pricewise and rewards can be earned, which equals free books.
As for the wish list idea, won't they have to pay tax on their gifts? I honestly don't know.
For The Good Book Co specifially, I just joined their ministry partners program. You get free shipping on every order, 40% off 10+ copies of any book (may not be helpful for a library but we sometimes order multiple copies to sell from our resource center) and access to free samples. You can place bulk orders with them by emailing ministrypartners@thegoodbook.com or calling 866-244-2165. Crossway has a similar program (Crossway+) that gives you discounts when ordering multiple copies of a book, free shipping on orders over $30, 50% off of ebooks/audiobooks, etc. Hope that helps!
Baker House gives 40% off on pre ordered and shipping free
You might be surprised how many publishers already have "stores" on Amazon so that their customers can take advantage of one-day delivery. Most publishers and book stores cannot do that. You will find this true for Lifeway. Lifeway is in the process of selling all their products on Lifeway.com for the same price on Amazon and are available on Amazon so you can get next day delivery. I have a hunch this same process is happening with a growing number of book distributors. Also consider the Amazon return policy.
Hi Stephanie.
Regarding discounts, my article written years ago still stands as a way to get gift books, along with new books not selling. You can download the article here: https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg/vol14/iss4/23/
It actually has been downloaded over 480 times to date, so people are still finding it useful.
Two books I would recommend are, Divine Matrix, and God According to God, both by scientists who tell us there is no way to have what we have without some initial mind or wisdom; God.
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg/vol14/iss4/23/%C2%A0
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broken link
Paul T. Jackson I got the same error message as Becky did.
Try:
https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/atg/vol14/iss4/23/