Dollar Tree Book Hauls

When I stumbled upon the world of "booktube" the one thing I noticed everyone had in common was an enormous library. Booktube and bookstagram are corners of the internet where book enthusiasts go to share their love of books. Usually this entails them reviewing books for their booktube (YouTube channels), booktok (TikTok), bookstagram (Instagram) etc. People usually spend hundreds of dollars on collectable books with different versions of covers, bookish merch etc. Truthfully the scene is blowing up. It used to not be cool to be a booknerd, but now it's become a full blown career path for people!

I have a bookstagram, but I am not nearly as dedicated as I feel some of the bigger names are. Often times, people are able to get ARC copies (Advance Reader Copy) before the publisher releases them to the public in exchange for a review. I initially stumbled upon the bookish community when a girl I was roommates with kept getting a subscription box sent to our tiny apartment. She was very into reading, and I initially fell out of it after I joined the Navy and was reading more self development types of books.

Each month she would get something called OwlCrate. OwlCrate is one of the bigger type of companies, where they focus specifically on YA (Young Adult) books and curate a box around the theme of the book that month. They also send about 5-6 other exclusive items that are curated by the company. I was blown away when I saw this. To get free promotion, the company would host a photo contest with themes around the items. People would create photo prompts, and use hashtags on instagram. If you were lucky the company would choose you and you would get a free box.

I couldn't believe how much the community had grown, and there are several other big name companies now. If I had something like this available to me when I was younger, I think I would've continued to read. But something clicked with me when I saw her box. I knew I wanted to join the company, and start reviewing the books, build my audience etc.

The one common theme that I ran into was how expensive books are and can be. When you are on a budget, it's not always super ideal to be throwing down $100 a month on new books. So I had to find a way to get books and be able to have more content on my YouTube channel. And by the grace of the universe Dollar Tree of all places blessed me tremendously.

Now hear me out, I know it shouldn't be a big deal to have a ton of books. Truthfully, I am sure to an extent I got carried away. But that being said, I wanted to read and read ALOT so I had content to post to my YouTube channel. I wanted props and things to be able to make content for Instagram, but Dollar Tree was the absolute last place I would ever think to buy a book.

As I was chasing my then 3 year old around the store telling him for the tenth time I was not buying all 10 animals he picked out, I happened to walk by the section that normally just had coloring books. To my surprise it had upgraded to what looked like a full blown Barnes and Noble. Now there weren't any books I recognized title wise, but needless to say they were regular brand new books. I was baffled. Half of them costed an average of $17, and I was literally going to take each one home for a $1? In total I made 3 YouTube videos of Dollar Tree hauls, and saved a total of $700 in books.

I went from owning a total of 6 books to now 75 books! My little library is organized by color so it looks esthetically pleasing, and most importantly I have a ton of material to read and write reviews on. Hobbies are not supposed to break the bank, especially when it comes to creating content for YouTube or Bookstagram. So while they may not be what you are looking for necessarily, it will help build your credibility as a book reviewer online. Publishers want to see how you work as a reviewer before sending you content. This also helped me to gain credibility in the booktube community. While I am still a little guy, having a supply of books to read has allowed me to be able to have ideas on what to talk about.

Dollar Tree is also an amazing place for bookish props for photos. Often times I have gone in and gotten many of their floral arrangements to use for props. If it looks high quality, and you are low balling budget wise then you are going to kill the bookstagram game. I find bookish photos to be very aesthetically pleasing and calming- which also helped me escape from all the political drama on Facebook during the election. The community is ultra friendly, and very welcoming which definitely helps.

So if you are a person who dreamt of being Belle from Beauty and the Beast with a giant library, I highly recommend going to Dollar Tree to stock up. They don't have a ton of different titles all the time, but they restock in my location every month or two months, depending on how many of them that they sell. Typically there isn't anything wrong with them. What happens is big bookstores order a big supply of books, and they only have a certain amount of shelf life, just like everything you see for sale in the store. With the left over stock, they end up selling it to Dollar Tree so they can clean out their inventory to make space for new stuff.

Eventually my game plan is to start reviewing books here on different articles here on this platform. YouTube has not been the best the last year or so with recognizing smaller creators. They in fact have revoked several hours in watch time from my channel and demonitized different videos without explanation. The platform now only caters to the creators who have been there the longest with the biggest followings, and in order to prevent you from making a residual income on the platform they have made the qualifications ungodly to get paid.

So I plan on overall pursuing a career in the book world, it just is going to look a little different and work in a way that works best for me. Not to mention I can actually interview the authors possibly and provide more of Q&A type of content which would be stellar. I just want to do this the most efficient way possible without breaking the bank, and Dollar Tree just seems to be my place!

Like what you read here today? There is more to come! I would appreciate if you contributed a gift below, this allows me to to keep my little family afloat.

-Kayla