Last night, I posted this item telling you that all Fantagraphics Books are 20% off so this would be a great time to buy, for example, The Complete Peanuts. The first five volumes retail for $144.75 so a 20% discount takes them down to $115.80. That's a good deal for you and probably a nice profit for Fantagraphics. I like the idea of, where feasible, buying books directly from the publisher (or even better, the author), thereby allowing more of the purchase price to go to folks who'll use the bucks to publish more. I'll often buy something that way, even though it would be a bit cheaper to order from a serious discounter.
However, under the oath I took when I became a Weblogger, I vowed to always tell you the best possible deal I could locate for an item. This requires me to mention something that Nat Gertler reminded me about. You can get those five Peanuts books even cheaper if you buy Volume One and Volume Two as one boxed set, and Volume Three and Volume Four as another. You get the same books plus you get the neat little slipcase that miraculously transforms two separate books into one boxed set.
Over at the Fantagraphics site, the two boxed sets retail for $49.95 each. Add in the as-yet unboxed Volume Five ($28.95) and the list price for all five is $128.85. Take 20% off that and your cost is $103.08.
But as they say in infomercials…"Wait! There's more!" Cole Odell reminds me that Amazon routinely discounts the most popular titles from Fantagraphics up to 37%. Right now, they sell the individual volumes for $18.24 each and the boxed sets for $32.97. So two boxed sets plus Volume Five equals $84.88. And it's even better than that because if you order from Fantagraphics, you'll need to pay shipping, which will tack another $22.50 onto your order, whereas Amazon will ship for free. I'm all for supporting publishers but the total Fantagraphics price works out to $125.58, whereas Amazon will sell you the exact same thing for $84.88, a savings of more than forty bucks. My sense of honor requires that I mention this.
And my sense of industry requires that I provide this Amazon link to order. That link will take you to the ordering page for the first boxed set and from there you can navigate easily to pick up the other books. If you go to the Amazon site via that link, this site receives a small cut of anything you order while you're over there…and not just Fantagraphics books or Peanuts books.
However, do not forsake the Fantagraphics 20% discount altogether! It has its useful qualities. As Mr. Odell notes in his e-mail, "…where [it] comes in handy is with the part of the list that isn't discounted better, elsewhere: any items not distributed through the book trade, plus items like Roberta Gregory's Bitchy Butch TPB, Feiffer, The Collected Works Vol. 1, and probably a slew of titles that didn't turn up in my cursory Amazon search."
Good point. Wherever possible, support the folks who create the books and those who publish them. But hey, forty bucks is forty bucks.