History
Founders Ken Gjemre and Pat Anderson opened the first store in 1972 in a former laundromat in Dallas, Texas, filling the shelves with 2,000 books out of their personal libraries. The founders believed in offering great products at great prices, selling new and gently-used books, magazines, music, movies, collectibles and game software at half the original price or less.
Pat Anderson’s daughter, Sharon Anderson Wright, is the company’s current President and CEO. In 2009, Sharon's sister Ellen O'Neal stepped up to the position of Chairperson of the Board in order to become more involved with the family business and carry out the mission of her mother.
As committed to employees as it is to profitability, Half Price Books has been generous with employee benefits from its earliest days, including abundant paid vacation, holiday and sick leave, affordable health, dental, vision and life insurance, quarterly bonuses, and a company-matched 401(k) plan.
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“Well, for us, in history where goodness is a rare pearl, he who was good almost takes precedence over he who was great.”
—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
“No one is ahead of his time, it is only that the particular variety of creating his time is the one that his contemporaries who are also creating their own time refuse to accept.... For a very long time everybody refuses and then almost without a pause almost everybody accepts. In the history of the refused in the arts and literature the rapidity of the change is always startling.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)