Kyoshii

[Edit: After I purchased the books, I thought sitting for the CAIA was a good investment of time, so I registered for the fall test. After you register, the CAIA gives you links to buy the books directly, which is pretty nice.  When I originally wrote this I had not registered.] 

I am taking a little lee way from my normal techie stuff to post about how to get near out of print books and a decent price. When I say “near” out of print, I mean within the last two or three years.

I am sitting for the CAIA Level one exam this fall. ( The CAIA is sort of a CFA for hedgies, although I think quite a few people would dis agree with me. ) And one of the books on the reading list is “near” out of print. Or at least it seems that way. It was published in 2004, and maybe they are waiting for a new edition of something. I could not find the book on the usual sites, Amazon, Barnes & Noble except from out-of-print book sellers. The prices were pretty high for a $125 book. Personally , $125 is a lot for a book, so I guess it is a damn good book. The reseller prices were from $299 to $315. At least they were consistent.

The book I need is called “Real Estate Finance & Investments: Risks and Opportunities (Hardcover)
by PHD Peter Linneman”.In detail , here is the book information.• Hardcover
• Publisher: Peter Linneman (2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0974451835

Now, I do not mind capitalism at all. I wish him all the luck. However, and it is a big however, I would really not like to be on the other end of his capitalism. And something just bothers me about paying $300 for a used copy of a $125 book. Call me old fashioned.

So here is the question. Why would some one spend more than twice the cover price for a book? The answer is that they do not know where to look, or they just have way too much money to care about it. Well, just because Amazon does not stock a book , does not mean you have to go to an “Out of print” bookseller.

So here are three ways to find a “near” out-of -print book, like the Linneman book.

1 Start with a meta search engine

Book meta-search engines search other book seller sites for the book you are looking to find. Yes, you could search each site yourself, but why go to 20 book sellers when you can go to one website?

bookfinder is a good place to start. It searches other online books stores, besides Amazon. Like Biblio, Abebooks, as well as Amazon. Bookfinder found 4 copies all USED for between $288 and $299.

cheapassbooksearch is another meta search site with a very good web site name. It found the book for $302 and $303.

campusbooks found the book, found the Linneman book for between 299 and $303.

So the meta-search engines are good, but they were all picking up on the same books, for about the same price. So not much of an advantage.

2 Go the collage route.

This textbook is used by several college courses, and as such if you do not NEED to have a book in new condition, you can pick one up used for a bargain. So first i need to know which classes used the book in question. So I started a search on Google for “Real Estate Finance & Investments: Risks and Opportunities site:.edu” ( The “site:.edu” will restrict it to the educational domains, but I am sure you already knew that )

The first hit was a Columbia University course that used it. If i had not already found a new copy of the book, I would have just made a few calls to bookstores around Columbia with the class number, jumped on the ‘A’ train and I probably would have found it.

3 Try the specialty Shops
I finally bought the book from IREI ( Institutional Real Estate Inc. ) for the list price of $125 NEW !!! . irei.com , and go to their bookstore. Specialty shop order a lot of these books and sell them over time. There is a good chance if your book is not too far out of print and is a speciality book, you will be able to find it.

I googled a few combinations of Real Estate and bookstore until I came across the IREI site, they had the book in stock and I ordered it. So i ended up with getting the book for list price.

Now I know what you are thinking. I could buy up all the copies from irei, and sell them as an out of print bookseller. So why am I publishing this on the web? First, I am too busy , and second I am not in the business of selling books. But if you are a out-of-print bookseller, you might want to make a call to irei and make a volume purchase as you will find a lot of CAIA candidates looking for this book in a couple of months.