No – I’m not writing a post about doing things according to standard operating procedures (if you knew me you’d know that I don’t do much of anything “by the book”). Actually, “Strictly by the Book” is the name of a bookstore in Salem, NH that I wanted to tell you about.

I don’t know how many of our readers live in Southern NH or Northern MA, but for those of you who do and who like books, this store is sorta like paradise. It is a “warehouse” store, so unlike Barnes & Noble or Borders, you don’t go there to pick up the latest best-seller that came out a few days ago. Instead, they purchase large lots of books from publishers and other retailers – either books that were “over-ordered” by the bookstores and were left-over, or items that might have slight defects that the publishers wouldn’t send out to the primary retailers. When I say “slight defect” I do mean “slight”. We’re talking about a logo on the back of the book being smudged a little bit or something along those lines.

I hate to say it, but most warehouse stores sell crap. That’s not the case here – they have a really broad selection of books that appeals to everyone in our family. The kid’s section is huge, so we always find things for Anna. Courtney loves her fiction & mysteries, and they have plenty of those. I tend to be into non-fiction and they never disappoint in this area either. There is one section though, that totally draws me in every time we go.

I’ve always been into art, and big, coffee-table art books have always been one of those things that I like to buy, but typically avoid because they are so overpriced. Well, somehow or another, Strictly By the Book must have made an arrangement with Phaidon which is one of the largest publishers of art-books, because they have a great selection of items from that company which all seem to range in price from $1 to $5. That was not a typo, I didn’t mean $10 and $50, I meant $1 and $5. These are books that typically retail for $20 to $100 dollars, so you are paying a tiny fraction of that price.

The lower level of my book-shelves, the ones reserved for the big-heavy books, have recently been filled to capacity with art books I’ve bought here. I can’t wait for our next trip to buy some more.

The great thing about this place is that unlike a regular retailer where you always tend to leave wondering “how the heck did I spend so much money and end up with so few items?”, you actually have the opposite experience here. While you are lugging out the enormous bags of books that you just bought you think “how did I get all of this stuff for so little money? It almost feels like stealing…”

The pricing is pretty simple – most items are between $1 and $5 with the occasional book going up to maybe $7. I think that pretty much every paper-back is a dollar, but they have a sheet listing all of the prices posted throughout the store. It’s based on a formula like “if the retail price was between $17.50 and $20, you’ll pay $3″.

To get an idea of what I’m talking about, take a look at this picture of our purchases during one recent trip.

I would guess that purchasing all of those at Barnes and Noble would have cost us in the area of $200. But take a look at our receipt to see what we paid here:

Yep, you read that right – $56.50 for all of it. The most expensive thing was one of my big old art-books that went for $6.

I’m writing about this store not just because we’re big fans and not just because it might be a good place for some of our local readers to pick up some last minute gifts for very little money, but also because I’ve heard that the place might be shutting down in January – to be replaced by a frigin “Sports Authority”. I know that we’ll be making a few more trips before the place closes, but I wanted to let our local readers know in case they’ve never heard of this place and wanted to swing by before it’s too late.

Here is the info:

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FTC Disclosures: I have not received any compensation of any sort from any company mentioned in this post, nor do I have any relationship of any sort with any company mentioned in this post – I just like books.