Conceptualizing the vision of Affordable Books in 1998 had it’s own pros and cons. The idea of having books “Affordable” especially for students, low income groups, seniors and disabled people indeed was the main idea behind the ideology. Although, the other part of it was keeping in mind that we are still a business needing profits to exist, thus we strive to offer the affordability concept but pricing enough to make some profit for operational expenses and the cost of doing business.

Hence, we shy away from using “Cheap” as we are not the cheapest place like the mighty name in the bookselling industry. Yet however we are not expensive like the drop shippers or antique book dealers trying to make that high bucks.  With this in mind though our flagship, www.affordable-booksonline.com and the rest of our online portfolios like www.usedbooksworld.com  strives to still offer the best prices specially for out of print and hard to find books as well as bestsellers and textbooks.

So looking at it, we are in between on pricing but were  niching on prompt delivery, customer service  and high quality books offered and described. And as any fledgling independent bookseller, there’s a lot of tough times and challenges simply to exist but the joy of doing what we do and the love of books keeps as going each day on our store and online.

Now on our 18th year, a lot has happened and transitioned in the industry including mobile apps and online advertising. I do however thank our loyal customers through the years who has continuously patronized us over the years through thick and thin. If not for them were probably not in cyberspace by now yet we have prevailed. The best part of it is that our online stores nowadays exist on their own which is really hard without the big box bookselling marketplaces we used to all belong and whom has the advertising dollars and pool of books from online booksellers.  Today we have streamline our participation on book marketplaces to the more specialized ones in tune to our concept of “affordability”.

As we go through our 18th year, our staff at ADLE International wishes to extend our special thanks to all of you.

Alex Esguerra