Bargain Books

I've always loved going to the used bookstore to find bargain books. It's not just that I'm someone who can't resist a deal – I also can't resist a book. My love for books defies their utility. Yes I like to read them, but I also love to collect them. I have shelf after shelf of book after book, piling up around my house and onto the floor. I buy books at the drop of a hat, even if I won't have a chance to read them for years.

This is why it is so important for me to find book bargains. Every market varies and fluctuates, but the price of books varies more than almost any other consumer good. If you go to a remaindered book store, for example, you can get last year's best-sellers for pennies. If you go to a used bookstore, sometimes you can find something that would cost you 30 dollars for less than three. If the used book store you go to throws out some of their books, you've really hit the jackpot. There is no telling what you'll find discarded behind the back of the bookstore.

I suppose that my obsession with bargain books started in college. Back then, I bought bargain textbooks because I needed to. I was a poor student living off financial aid, and I needed to make every dollar count. Getting a bargain book wasn't easy in those days. All the students wanted to buy used books, and the bookstores didn't always stock enough of them. Sometimes, the professors would wait until the very last minute to put in their book orders, and as a result we would have to pay full price.

Back then, I used the Internet to buy bargain books. Nowadays, everyone takes this technology for granted, but when I was going to college it was still pretty new. Setting up book swaps with other students over e-mail was something that a lot of people didn't know how to do, and I sort of pioneered it on our campus. There was a bargain bookstore, however, that usually did have pretty good selections of most of the major textbooks used in college. When I couldn't trade books with someone or buy used books from them, that is where I would go. I would say that three times out of four, I could find a used version of whatever I was looking for.

Audio books

I love to read. I love reading anything and everything that comes in my direction. The problem is; I don’t have time to sit down and open up a book as much as I used to. Every morning, I have a forty-five minute commute to work. On the way home, my commute often will take a full hour. A good friend of mine, who also is a huge fan of reading, told me that I should borrow one of her audio books and try it out on one of my commutes. While I wasn’t too keen on the idea of having to listen to a story, I agreed. I let it sit in my car for several days before even attempting to listen to it. I just thought that the idea of someone reading me a story seemed so childish. Finally, four days after she loaned it to me, I found myself sitting in construction. Bored and frustrated, I decided to try it. Within five minutes, I found myself so absorbed in one of my favorite author’s stories, that I lost track of time. I listened to it the entire rest of my drive to work and finished it on my way home from work.

When I returned it to her the following weekend, I asked to borrow a few more. Since falling in love with the idea of keeping up to date on all of the books that I’ve been missing out on, I’ve taken to buying and renting audio books frequently. At first, I purchased all of the audio books that I wanted. It added up way too fast. I joined a book club and got audio books at a decent discounted price, which thrilled me. I checked out my local library and would borrow some audio books for a week. Their selection was not as great as what I would like, but you can’t beat something that doesn’t cost a single cent.

Before too long, my boring commutes to work were no longer boring. I found myself completely absorbed in my audio books. Interestingly enough, I had thought that someone reading to me wouldn’t be very appealing but instead, I found that the tone of voices that the narrator would use could be very engaging. Their interpretations and readings of certain events within a story could make me think differently than I may have read the same event in a book.

If you love to read and simply don’t have the time to finish a book from start to finish, make your commute or travels a bit more enjoyable and get yourself some audio books. Whether you purchase them from a bookstore, join a book club to get them at a discounted price or find them at your local library, you’ll find that it is worth every single penny.

Bookkeeping Basics

Most people probably think of bookkeeping and accounting as the same thing, but bookkeeping is really one function of accounting, while accounting encompasses many functions involved in managing the financial affairs of a business. Accountants prepare reports based, in part, on the work of bookkeepers.

Bookkeepers perform all manner of record-keeping tasks. Some of them include the following:

-They prepare what are referred to as source documents for all the operations of a business - the buying, selling, transferring, paying and collecting. The documents include papers such as purchase orders, invoices, credit card slips, time cards, time sheets and expense reports. Bookkeepers also determine and enter in the source documents what are called the financial effects of the transactions and other business events. Those include paying the employees, making sales, borrowing money or buying products or raw materials for production.

-Bookkeepers also make entries of the financial effects into journals and accounts. These are two different things. A journal is the record of transactions in chronological order. An accounts is a separate record, or page for each asset and each liability. One transaction can affect several accounts.

-Bookkeepers prepare reports at the end of specific period of time, such as daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. To do this, all the accounts need to be up to date. Inventory records must be updated and the reports checked and double-checked to ensure that they're as error-free as possible.

-The bookkeepers also compile complete listings of all accounts. This is called the adjusted trial balance. While a small business may have a hundred or so accounts, very large businesses can have more than 10,000 accounts.

-The final step is for the bookkeeper to close the books, which means bringing all the bookkeeping for a fiscal year to a close and summarized.

We live in a very fast paced society. Even though everything is more convenient today more than ever, people seem to have less time to do the things that need to be done. We teach are children that they have to fill every waking minute with some type of activity, and yet we get upset with them when they claim to be bored. We have become a society of people that cannot just sit.

Part of my crazy daily routine includes commuting two hours a day. I am making this sacrifice because I have a good paying job and our home is on a lake. I compromise and drive during the week so I do not have to drive on the weekends to get to the lake. One of the things that I have found to fill my commute is listening to books. I am always looking for audio book sales so I can buy something to listen to on my way to and from work. I like to buy the books because I do not always get to listen to them in a timely manner so I constantly had to run back and forth to the library. By watching for audio book sales I am able to pick them up for just a bit more than the reading version of the book.

When audio books first came on the market I thought they were ridiculous. It seemed to me that it was just one more way people would avoid the quiet. I also thought it would contribute to illiteracy. I am finding that I was wrong. Listening to the audio books increases people’s interest in books. My children have started to read more because of listening to some of my books with me. Also listening together helps stimulate some lively discussions about the book. For me the audio helps to bring the characters alive. I especially like the books that feature the author as the narrator. With the author reading the book you know that the emphasis will be placed on what the key words are. It is interesting that there are some audio books that I am not able to listen to because I do not like the narrator. I need to have a certain pitch voice to hold my attention and interest level. If the pitch is not right I find that I get irritated and my anxiety level goes up. My travel time goes much faster when I am listening to a book. I find that I arrive in much calmer spirits and traffic and poor drivers do not bother me as much as they used to.

Four Good Reasons to Use Viral E-books

It is a well known and widely accepted fact, that E-books….FREE E-books…are one of the best weapons in a viral marketing campaign arsenal. Here are four good reasons why this is true today and will continue to be true for the foreseeable future:

1. E-books are cheap to produce and don’t take long to set up. If you have articles that you have already written about the subject you are promoting, you can simply combine these articles into an E-book. If, on the other hand, writing isn’t your forte, you can use rebrandable E-books that have been produced by others. Just use your favorite search engine and do a web search for “rebrandable E-books”. You will get a lot of hits and have many to choose from. One way to distribute these E-books to visitors to your website is to give them as a free gift for subscribing to your newsletter. If your E-book contains material that people will want to share with their friends and family, they will pass it along to them… they will pass it along to others…and you will make money.

2. E-books are capable of reaching a large audience. The only limiting factor is the enthusiasm or the participants. Therefore, it is absolutely vital that your E-book contain something that people will want to share like timely information or humor. Remember that people like to know something that the rest of the world needs to know. They will pass along something that makes them look like they are in-the-know.

3. E-books are a way to sell other products other than the one you originally targeted. For example; if you are selling garden products, your customers could also be interesting in E-books about lawns, trees landscaping, etc.

4. E-books are effective in building your reputation. It is an implied recommendation if you give a quality E-book and users willing pass on to others.

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