Places To Find Inexpensive Books
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I frequently use books in therapy! It’s a great way to incorporate literacy and language skills. While I love browsing big name book stores, I sometimes don’t love the prices. Here are my tips for finding inexpensive books:
1. Thrift Stores: While you may have to do some digging, you can often find great books for a steal.
2. Paper Back Swap: This is a website that allows you to trade books and get new ones using credits. So dig out those old books you don’t need anymore and trade them for new ones!
3. Dollar Store/Dollar Spot: Sometimes you can find great, short books at these places…among other things that can easily cause you to spend more than you intended.
4. eBay: If you search “children’s book lot” or “speech therapy,” you can usually get a bunch of different hits for less.
5. Amazon: When you search for a book on Amazon, you sometimes have the option to buy a used version, which can be considerably cheaper. Plus, if you have Amazon Prime, you can get free 2 day shipping!
6. Children’s Section of Alibris books: I haven’t personally ordered from here, but there were some books for as low as $0.99!
Where do you get books for your therapy room?
Working in an elementary school, I am able to buddy up with some of my teaching friends and order through their Scholastic account. They have a wonderful selection!
Garage sales, library sales (a lot of libraries sell donations and books pulled out of circulation), Goodwill, Scholastic (they have a lot of titles for very cheap, and they have occasional sales), school libraries especially towards the end of the year (again, selling donations and books pulled out of circulation).
Also check with classroom teachers as they clean out their rooms, buy new packs of stuff (and get rid of the old stuff), as they retire, as classrooms are moved around.
Also check with colleagues to swap and borrow materials.
Also start a book/material swap with families – some families are awesome about trading out things their kids have grown out of.
Powell’s City of Books also sometimes has good deals. They have a k-12 educator discount. There’s also a petition circulating to include PreK educators in the discount.
Teaming up with colleagues to get quantity discounts, as mentioned in the comment above, is also a great idea.