The price of books is just plain absurd!
After paying 36 dollars for a book on how to learn Photoshop back around 2001, I swore off buying retail. Not worth it.
Thank goodness for garage sales, or else I wound never buy any.
I love the used books on Amazon. I've gotten a couple that were rated a little high (very good instead of good condition), but I've had more that were in better condition than stated. When you get a $50 book for $10 including shipping you know you've gotten a deal. It used to be that you would have to scrounge around local used book stores to find an out of print book or cheap copy of a book still in print (and usually not find it), but now you can search the entire country at one shot.
Buy copies of survival books, skill related books or politically incorrect titles via cash. Your purchase history isn’t tracked, and you own the work outright, versus Kindle copies that could be deleted off the device via DRM.
I thank my local friends of the library, they have a book sale about every quarter. Once a year my girls and I load up on ~10 paper grocery BAGS for $3 each. I’m amazed at what I find.