And here come the early Black Friday book deals, with some of the best savings already coalescing around hardcovers, paperbacks and Kindle editions that rotate on and off the deal-making carousel.
For readers compiling their winter TBR piles — or gift givers hoping to make the budget stretch — this is the first significant wave of discounts leading up to the peak weekend.
The best deal we’re seeing at the moment is a very wide-ranging Buy One/Get One 50% off promo on select print titles from a major online retailer that silently matches or beats many of this month’s sale prices. With a handful of great e-book prices below $3 thrown in, it’s one of the rare opportunities to secure both shelf-worthy hardcovers you can take your time reading and reads that are instantly available for download, no waiting necessary.
Best early deals on hardcovers and paperbacks
The BOGO 50% offer on select hardcovers and paperbacks is the best early print play because it has a deep backlist and recent hits. You simply add two eligible titles to your cart, and the discount is automatically applied to the lower-priced book — simple, straightforward and mighty if you pair bargain-bin picks already marked down.
- Kristin Hannah’s The Women has dropped to the low teens for hardcover.
- Riley Sager’s Final Girls is hovering near $7 in paperback.
- Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation has fallen to the low teens in hardcover.
- Emily Henry’s Book Lovers and Alex Michaelides’s The Silent Patient are sitting around $6–$8 in paperback.
Mix-and-match purchases are especially powerful — match a full-price new release with a discounted paperback to get the most from that 50% kicker.
Print buyers should also look for retailer price-matching against rival big-boxes and chain bookstores, which tend to echo each other’s book promotions at this time. If you care about packaging your gifts nicely, now is the time to get hardcovers while stock and dust jackets are perfect; signed editions and special printings often sell through at a high clip once the weekend crush descends.
Standout Kindle edition bargains and sub-$3 reads to grab
Kindle deals are also more hit-and-miss but can still be great on a book-by-book level. The sweet spot is $0.99 or $1.99, and then there is a second tier around $2.99. Recent eye-catchers include Andrea Mara’s All Her Fault at $0.99; Dennis Lehane’s Shutter Island at $1.99; and Clémence Michallon’s The Quiet Tenant at $1.99 — handy additions if you’d like some fast, bingeable reads that won’t hit your wallet too hard.
Two pro tips for digital buyers: add the wishlist titles to keep an eye on price swings and click around for price parity across U.S. e-book emporiums, as major retailers often match each other within hours of a first cut. If you’re a subscription service user, like Kindle Unlimited, keep in mind that promotional purchases are forever stuck in your library — so sub-$2 buys could be the more strategic long-term play for favorites you’ll want to reread or recommend.
How to shop smart for books now without Black Friday FOMO
Begin with a short list: two or three buzzy 2025 releases you want in hardcover, two or three backlist paperbacks you’ll actually read and a handful of digital impulse buys under $3. Then stack offers. The BOGO 50% can stack with the individual title cuts, making an already reduced paperback a relative bargain. Where e-books are concerned, check the rotation twice a day, in the morning and five minutes before midnight; many limited-time drops get reset at night.
Rely on price-history tools to verify if a discount is really Black Friday-worthy; long-running trackers like Keepa or CamelCamelCamel reveal pricing patterns and help you avoid lukewarm cuts. For gifts, take advantage of extended holiday return windows and print gift receipts. If you’re shopping across retailers, don’t forget to factor in both shipping thresholds and loyalty points — sometimes negligible differences can push a close call over the edge as far as value is concerned.
What the data shows on holiday book pricing
According to Circana BookScan, U.S. print book sales have topped 700 million units annually for the past few years and there is a marked increase in the fourth quarter as retailers initiate promotions.
Backlist sales make up about 70 percent of unit sales in a typical year, which is why holiday deal pages are full of known hits — they’re mass movers and they respond well to discounts.
The Association of American Publishers has also reported consistent single-digit growth in digital formats over the past several reporting periods, and that is perhaps reflected in Black Friday patterns: frontlist e-books very rarely crash, but backlist thrillers, romance, book club selections can queue up to dive from $15 to anywhere between $0.99–$2.99. For print, production and freight costs have increased since 2021, so early-season promotions such as 40–50% off list on select hardcovers or BOGO 50% on backlist are now effectively the new benchmark “great deal.”
The bottom line for readers is this: grab the BOGO 50% print titles that you actually want now and cherry-pick Kindle deals for under $3 when they crop up. More such flashy bundles will doubtless arrive as the weekend draws closer, but the quiet, high-quality discounts are already in place and they’re exactly the type that go soonest.