4) Why would you want to send it back? Most of the books that claim to show you "How To" are the ones you want. Not every page of every book will be useful, but I'll bet you find something useful in every book. Use the internet. Amazon, E-Bay, Yahoo!, Powell’s, Half.com and numerous book sources are available to anyone on the planet. Use your favorite search portal. Sometimes you want a certain title and you want it now (but you could wait three days for shipping if you knew it was on the way). Check each site for their return policy on purchased items. Save money by checking the new and used inventory. Some new titles are discounted. On some auctions I have been the high and only bidder at bids less than the price of shipping. Search for auction titles and descriptions using misspelled variations of words. “Turquoise” and “sapphire” each offer an amusing sampling when you use phonetic equivalents. Forget the fact the seller could simply copy the word from the title. Forget that people had to use a computer to type the listing and computers have spell-checkers. Some people are funny, and, well,stupidlazy;
5) Pay retail - A) Maybe a relative wants to buy you something but has no idea what you like. Tell them to give you an Amazon coupon. They can send money to Amazon, Amazon sends you an email coupon and you have a couple of years to think about it. Me, it took a few seconds. The Brepohl. I knew finding a used copy in German would not help me at the bench and the English translation was too new to have any copies in the used market. Time to pay retail (with OPM);
6) Pay retail - B) Remainders, close-outs, Bargains, etc. These are the tables and stacks of books at the traditional retailer which have been marked down. The needle in the haystack for specific titles, otherwise a good source of trade-ins - but know your values and used market prices. I found a remainder copy of The Inner Game of Tennis for $1.99 for myself and they had another copy at full retail on the shelf. Oh, well. Computers, inventory turn-over and cash-flow. Retail in the 21st century - use it to your advantage.
7) Pay retail.
Don’t buy a book for trade if it has any highlighting, marginal notations, etc. If you want it for yourself, fine. While previous owner’s names and inscriptions written on fly and ex libris stamps and marks are okay, the cleaner the better. No torn covers, or hardbacks without dust jackets. No insect damage (small holes, tunnels). No water/coffee/liquid damage (wrinkled, warped, stuck pages, stinky, brown color). Smokers/smoke damage: no, stinky and discolored block. Foxing (brownish discolor not related to water damage, frequently on edges of block, mottled, spotty) can be okay if no smell and no other deterioration and older hard-to-find title. Basic rule: any damage other than light to almost medium wear, don’t buy. Even if the price is just a quarter. You will smile to yourself as you put this book in your own garage sale a year later and laugh out loud when after the sale you throw it away because no one else bought it, even for a quarter. How could I possibly know this? ;) The corollary test: While looking at a damaged book, can you take a quarter out of your pocket, walk over to the trash cans beside the house (at the garage sale), open a trash can and throw your quarter into the trash can and close the lid? You need to actually do this and not just visualize doing it. If you can throw away money then buy the book. Me, I can’t do it. Again, this is for trading books.