Returns
Items must be in new, unread condition and can be returned with receipt within 30 days of sale: the sale date for prepaid orders is the date we first notify you that the book is available for pickup, NOT the date you collect the book. Returns are for store credit only. Exceptions are as follows:
Gift receipts allow for a 60-day return window.
Books purchased in connection with author events are usually not returnable.
All sales from our 40% off clearance shelves or sidewalk sales are final.
Credit card refunds are available if you cancel a prepaid special order or a book purchase made through our website, but only until the next close of business after you make the payment - this would be either later the same day, or the following day for web orders that come in after we close. After the close of business, we are no longer able to void a transaction before it goes to our credit card processor, and chances are also excellent that we have ordered your book from our distributor.
Cancellations after the next close of business will be treated as a return and deposits will be credited to your store account rather than refunded to a credit card.
Some titles are not returnable from the point that we submit your order to our distributor because they are either not returnable for us, or priced with a very small retail margin by the press, or both -- usually these are self-published or from academic presses. These books require a non-returnable payment before we place your order and will be clearly marked in our webstore, or we will alert you while taking a phone or in-person order, or before processing an emailed order.
We’re happy to create gift registries for you! Family and friends can shop through our webstore or order by phone or email and designate their purchase for your birthday, baby shower, or b’nai mitzva. Gifts can then be collected all together at your chosen time, or we can deliver them by arrangement. We are also very happy to set up gift registries for teachers. Give us your wish list for your school or classroom! To set up a registry, email us at orders@bigbluemarblebooks.com.
Gift Registry
Frequent Buyers
The Frequent Buyer Program is now all electronic.
A brief history of our reward program, since our long-time customers have experienced multiple programs: before the pandemic, we used an analog card system to track purchases and issued a coupon for every $150 spent. Record-keeping was clunky and error-prone, and we phased it out over about eight months during lockdown in favor of an automated system that issued a credit instead of a coupon. We switched to credits not for any business-plan reason but because our point-of-sale system isn’t set up to issue coupons.
The new system has been fully in place since April, 2021. We reviewed the program early in 2023 and concluded that it was costing us too much and wasn’t encouraging larger sales the way the coupons did. So we are bringing back coupons and trimming the credit.
Twice a year in mid May and early November, we’ll use email to send coupons out to customers who have made purchases in the previous six or twelve months, respectively, AND who have a current email on file. Anyone who has made a purchase of any size during the time period will receive a coupon, which will be good for a single purchase and will expire after a month or six weeks. We absolutely want you to gather big piles of books for vacation/camp/summer reading, and to make your holiday purchases early in the winter retail season. Coupons are subject to our usual discount policies (see below).
Going forward, the frequent buyer credit will be for $3 for every $150 spent, which is in line with other independent businesses’ reward programs. Don’t worry! All credits earned at the old rate of $7.50 will remain on your account, and you will not lose progress toward your next reward. As always, there’s no fee to join, no timeline on accumulating purchases towards your reward, and unlike the coupons, you don’t need to have an email on file with us to receive the credit.
All full-price book and merchandise purchases count towards the $150. Gift certificates are a special case: they are not credited to the account of the purchaser, but instead to the account of the recipient when they’re redeemed. However, they do count as a purchase when we issue twice-yearly coupons.
Gift Certificates
Yes, we have gift certificates! You can buy gift certificates online and we will mail the certificate to the happy recipient in a lovely blue envelope with a Big Blue Marble sticker, and send an email with information about the certificate and how to redeem it.
Gift certificates cannot be used to purchase books through our website, as these are two different payment systems. Please email us to apply a gift certificate to a purchase.
Gift Wrapping?
We wrap one package for free per customer per day - that package can be a few books piled together. Each package after that is $3.50.
From mid-November through December, we charge for each wrapped package and reserve the right to suspend gift wrapping service if lines get long and staffing isn’t available. (Exact date in November changes because of variable dates for Thanksgiving and Hanukkah.)
Discounts
When you spend your dollars locally, you support booksellers who have built up expertise over years of reading, studying literature and creative writing, following the publishing world closely, and talking to customers of all ages and from the full range of our neighborhood’s diversity about the books and authors they love so we can pool the collective booklove of our neighborhood of readers. You make it possible for us to bring in new releases week after week, to hunt down partially-remembered titles, to take chances on debut authors, and to geek out with first-graders about Zoey and Sassafras.
You are purchasing more than a book when you shop here: you are crowdsourcing a neighborhood and a city that love reading and writers and the life of words.
We can’t afford to do what we do if we compete with Amazon or big box stores on price. Instead, the discounts we offer are targeted to support extraordinary acts of reading:
Pre-K - 12 classroom teachers who are buying books for classroom (not personal) use: 15%, tax-free with non-profit exemption certificate
First Responders: 10% discount on entire purchase
Book Clubs: 10% on three or more books purchased and prepaid all at the same time. Club members can collect books individually if we have appropriate contact information.
Schools and daycares buying 10 or more books for programs or fundraisers: 20%, tax-free with non-profit exemption certificate. (Can be multiple titles, but purchase must be organized through a single order or a single registry.)
Discounts can’t be applied to purchases of gift certificates, to author-event books or books with academic pricing on our end, or combined with other sales and promotions. Discounted purchases do not count toward frequent buyer credits but do count toward frequent buyer coupons.
Book Fairs for Fundraising
If your school, PTA, community group, or nonprofit needs to raise funds, consider an in-store book fair.
Organizing one is easy - work with our staff to choose a list of books and a time for your event, publicize it to your networks, and earn 20% of purchases made during the fair.
Contact our Event Coordinator to find out more: events@bigbluemarblebooks.com