Thought you guys might appreciate some good old bookoff haul pr0n 
I want to post pictures of all my physical books at some point, but for now I’ll just add pictures of my most recent book haul~
From top to bottom, left to right:
- 無能な皇子と呼ばれてますが中身は敵国の宰相です | L30
- 王弟殿下とナイルの異邦人 | L30??
- 拝啓、百年先の世界のあなたへ | L30??
- FLESH & BLOOD 23 | L33
- 二重螺旋 (series) | L24 (books 1-3) (actually, looking at it, I think I accidentally ordered them from 3 to 1…)
More details, more pictures
So I picked these up because the publisher is in full swing for their annual publisher birthday fair, and as a huge Flesh&Blood fan I’ve been keeping up with any new bonus stories released for it. Not only did F&B get a new short story, it also received a new “stand canvas” (a shikishi board, basically) with new art, so I super wanted to get those. Technically I could have bought them all secondhand, but where’s the fun in that? So I picked up some more books along the way.
Each book, when ordered from a participating retailer, comes with one stand canvas (randomly assigned) and one birthday fair pamphlet (you can pick which one you want). Manga and bunkos each have their own separate categories of canvases/pamphlets, and you can only receive that category of bonus if that’s the type of book you buy.
Here’s my picture of all my books + bonuses; pamphlets on the left, canvases in the middle, books on the right:
I picked up all 7 pamphlets because I could; the bottom four are the ones given to bunko orders and the top three to manga orders. The bottom four blue envelopes are bunko stand canvases, and the top three red ones are for manga.
The stand canvas envelopes were sealed, so I had to veeery carefully open them. 
Here’re my gacha results!
So as you can see I hit the jackpot! The canvas on the left in the middle row is my beloved Flesh&Blood. 
I wasn’t anticipating getting it at all, to be honest; I was planning ordering it from a secondhand site as I was opening them, haha. Not sure what I’m going to do with the rest of the canvases. 
They’re fairly small, at least, so I should be able to store them pretty easily.
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I just got a copy of 幼女戦記 1 Deus lo vult | L43 and I’m obsessed with the obi design, I love it so much. 
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I’ll have to organize my shelves so I can take a picture of them; my books are kind of all over the place right now. Augh, organizing’s a pain, though… (Also, I need more shelf space…)
I organize my Japanese books in manga by title and novels by title (ABC order rather than 五十音順 since I don’t know that well enough; I have obsessive-compulsive tendencies, but this doesn’t bother them somehow). My English books are by genre and then vibes a.k.a. however I feel like it, though I try to keep authors together. And those I go a little bit by size too so it’s easier when I gotta start stacking books on top.
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I honestly never really had the interest/energy to organize my entire collection. I just stick the books that I think belong together together and put them wherever there’s room. Although my manga and light novels are kinda organized by publisher, it’s completely unintentional and I don’t bother with that for the rest of the books. I have more books than this but they’re mostly textbooks and scattered around randomly in my room somewhere.
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I have no idea how to organise my books in Japanese yet but try to keep series in order and I’ve a shelf of books in a specific order I want to read them in but that’s about it.
I have more books on the way and I need to re-organise the ones I do have so that I can make space for the new ones on the way.
I need more shelf space 
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When I moved recently I arbitrarily decided to group my books by author but as I take away and add books I doubt that will stay. I suppose I also keep my hardcovers and paperbacks separate but that’s more due to height than anything else.
Also, books that I intend to donate (I’ve read and don’t care to keep basically) get moved off to a different space so when I’m ready I can just grab them and go.
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I intend to donate some books and manga as well, except I don’t know where since there’s not much of a Japanese learning community around me. I suppose either the public library system or a college with a Japanese language program would be best, but I haven’t looked into it much yet.
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Used book stores might buy them too, if they’ve got a foreign-language section
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I’m lucky to have a semi-large Japanese population near me between exchange students and Japanese companies, but I suspect libraries in any metro area would probably be happy to take gently used books in different languages since purchasing them is so pricey. The town I grew up in (around ~100k people, very few of which are Japanese people) has around 300 books in Japanese looking online.
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I put a couple of books in an open library kinda thing as a trial and they were gone within a day. Might have been someone selling them on or something, but as long as they don’t get thrown away, I am ok with that. I will probably try contacting my local Japanese International School and see if they might want to add some of the books to their in-house library. I could probably sell them, but that’s so much work for a few euro… 
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Charity bookshops will probably take them too – they can always sell them on in the used market if they don’t have a market locally. (I found two of my favourite authors through “local charity shops in the UK happened to have a few books they’d been donated” lucky chance.)
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Any advice on reliable parcel forwarding stuff (I suspect ‘cheap’ is not a factor here, but that would be great if possible…?) Looking to buy some used manga from Aus, probably just off amazon, and trying to figure out what amount of cheap-as-chips manga I need to buy before it actually becomes worth it…
Main ones I see floating are Tenso and WhiteRabbit.
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I have been very happy with FromJapan. 
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+1
Also for those who order physical media. I just went back to CDJapan after receiving an email that they lowered the shipping prices, and holy moly, they are now cheaper than AmazonJP and they do Customs/VAT for you!
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Thanks for the heads up on shipping cost changes – I’ll redo a comparison with Amazon next time I put in an order. (What I’d really like them to fix is the way they have a lot fewer books available than other sellers.)
They’ve done customs/VAT on their end for at least a year now. I get the impression there was some kind of change in EU and UK regulations that puts this requirement on the seller now, so everybody either does it or has got out of the international shipping business.
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Yes, I guess that’s true, but they started to do it recently by my carrier of choice (DHL).
I just ordered a big ass game box, with clothing and a bunch of other goodies and the shipping was less than 20EUR.
I saved about 25-30EUR vs ordering at AmazonJP.
My public postal service is terrible handling VAT/Customs, even when it comes prepaid.
Sometimes they even ask to pay again and claim later.
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Might I interest you in a brief write up on it in the Book Providers Megathread (Official Management) …? 
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I just placed an order a couple days ago (I think after this shipping drop, but not sure since I didn’t get this email) and it cost 9,090 yen cost+shipping for 8 manga. Adding those same mange on Amazon gives a cost of 10,788 yen. The manga itself is slightly more expensive for some reason (300 yen), but the shipping is a whopping 1,400 yen higher on Amazon. This is to the US of course. I’ll be curious to see how it works out for you as well.
For those curious, general +1 from me for CDJapan based on the packaging alone. Worst I’ve had from CDJapan was a slightly bent corner. When I used to order from Amazon I’ve had completely torn obi and severely bent corners, which isn’t surprising since they barely secured the manga in the package (and a couple times they just threw them in loosely with no padding at all). Even when CDJapan is slightly more expensive than Amazon I’d still pick them.
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Wow I haven’t thought of CDJapan since I was literally buying CDs from Japan in college (I’m old 
). I’ll definitely check them out next time I need to do a physical order. I give a lot of money to Jeff Bezo’s Rocket Fund, but I prefer not to when I have the choice.
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