How To Find Old, Rare, And Out-of-Print Books: Top Tips To Find Vintage Golds 2021

It is always good to look for the old vintage things, and books are never the exceptions. Old book smelll, sound when you flip the page, and its yellowish or maybe brownish color make the old book more analogue.

Are you searching for your favorite old, rare, or out-of-print horse books? These ten tips will help you find them!

Visit your local public library.

Today’s libraries offer movies, music, video games, and community events, but they still have those great book collections that are decades – and sometimes centuries! – old. Check your library’s online catalog, ask a librarian, or browse the shelves, and you may find your favorite old books – and a few new ones to try.

Search free online libraries.

More than 40,000 books are available for free reading and download through online libraries. Look for world classics at Project Gutenberg and Bartleby, and children’s stories at The Baldwin Project.

Go to the book sales at your public, school, and university libraries.

When I went to a book sale at the Regenstein, the main library at the University of Chicago, I snagged a ten-volume, illustrated, edge-marbled, 19th century set of Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley novels for fifty cents per book. Whether you’re searching for a multi-volume series or a single picture book, if you dig through the book sales at your public, school, and university libraries, you may find unexpected – but much beloved – treasures.

Visit your local secondhand bookstores.

At your neighborhood’s secondhand bookstore, you’ll often find not only a variety of intriguing used books, but also a vibrant community of readers and book collectors. If you don’t have a local secondhand bookstore, or if you’d just like to take a merry tour of the beguiling world of bookshops and the characters, literary and living, who populate them, check out Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone’s book, Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World.

Search rare, used, and out-of-print bookstores online.

Online secondhand marketplaces list thousands of rare, used, and out-of-print books that are available from booksellers and individuals around the world. Try AbeBooks, Alibris, Amazon, and Powell’s for stock and collectible titles.

Check your attic.

Seriously. Check your attic, basement, and crawl spaces for that wayward cardboard box marked “Books.” They turn up more often than you think!

Host a book party.

Invite all of your horse-crazy friends to bring a copy – or a memory – of their favorite equestrian books. Add carrots and other party snacks. Mix well, and be ready for some big horse-laughs and bubbly book chats.

Join or start a book club.

Join or start a book club at your library or school, in your community, or online. Talking about books with people who love to read is a fun, easy way to connect with old and new books, and old and new friends.

Share and pass on your favorite stories.

In Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, a group of book lovers called the Book People memorized great books and recited them so that the stories would live on, even though the books themselves had been burned. If you love a story, share it and pass it on! Read books from your childhood to children of today. Give your favorite books as gifts. Participate in a book drive, or donate books directly to your library or charity. (And, of course, email me and leave comments on this blog about the wonderful horse books you’ve read!) The more people who know about and love classic books, the easier it will be for readers of our generation – and readers of future generations – to find them and enjoy them.