New text­book prices have many par­ents opt­ing to pur­chase sec­ond-hand books for their chil­dren for the start of the new aca­d­e­m­ic year next week.

This was con­firmed yes­ter­day by used books sell­er Giselle Oliv­er, who said she has seen an in­crease in peo­ple buy­ing sec­ond-hand books this year.

“The sale has in­creased sig­nif­i­cant­ly with pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary re­al­ly, Form One not as much,” she said.

Oliv­er, the own­er of G.A.I.O Book Traders, lo­cat­ed in the Peo­ple’s Mall on Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, said she has been sell­ing used books with her moth­er most of her life.

Oliv­er said they were first lo­cat­ed on Hen­ry Street, then moved to Wood­ford Square be­fore set­tling at their cur­rent lo­ca­tion.

“We used to be lit­tle chil­dren drag­ging bags of books and run­ning from the po­lice, that is how we start­ed,” she said.

Oliv­er said her moth­er was a sin­gle moth­er and that’s one of the rea­sons why the plight of par­ents strug­gling to pur­chase books res­onates with her, es­pe­cial­ly now dur­ing a pan­dem­ic.

“They hap­py to save some mon­ey from new books,” she said.

Par­ent Jac­in­ta Tou­s­saint said she had two sec­ondary school book­lists to fill and chose to pur­chase them sec­ond-hand be­cause she had to shop smart.

“It have books for 300 dol­lars, you come here you go get it for a 150...you see the books in the book store is very high and every­thing is go­ing up but your pay is not go­ing up,” Tou­s­saint said.

An­oth­er cus­tomer agreed.

Dene­cia An­drews said the ex­tra book­list ex­pense was hard to man­age along with her oth­er bills.

“Let we say a book is about $150, I go get it for a lil $80...is my rent, my light bill is every­thing ...it lil cost­ly, es­pe­cial­ly when I have to get the lil school­books,” An­drews said.

An­drews al­so claimed the chil­dren sel­dom used the books pur­chased for the last term.

Oliv­er con­firmed this and said most of the books were in pris­tine con­di­tion, as stu­dents hard­ly used them while class­es were on­line.

“A lot of the books that came back this year is like al­most new books... they were com­plain­ing about hav­ing to pur­chase these books every year and they not be­ing used as they should,” she said.

An­oth­er sec­ond-hand book­seller said most par­ents usu­al­ly hes­i­tate to pur­chase used books for their chil­dren, but usu­al­ly give in as the be­gin­ning of the school year gets clos­er and they see the prices at stores.

“They end­ing up right here in the end­ing ... they com­ing and they look­ing for bar­gains, so even though if we want to sell them a book for 200, some­times when some of them fin­ish we ain’t have a choice but to take off the ma­jor­i­ty,” Bev­er­ly Bal­combe said.

Some par­ents al­so said they were able to sell the sec­ond-hand books right back to the sup­pli­er the next year, which saves them mon­ey and helps them pay for the books on their new lists.

Ac­cord­ing to Re­bec­ca H, it’s ei­ther that or sell the books them­selves on­line. She said she pur­chased all her son’s books for this school year sec­ond-hand, on­line and sold his old ones as well.

“I got all my books on Face­book from a par­ent and they were all new,” she said.

She said pur­chas­ing this way cost her “less than half” of her bud­get.