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Lordandmaster -> RE: Question about buying books (5/14/2006 12:04:52 PM)
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I buy literally hundreds of books online per year. These are the sites I use day in and day out:
http://www.addall.com/ Search for a book by author, title, or ISBN number, and find out instantly who is offering the best deal. It doesn't cover all booksellers, but it's the most comprehensive if you're looking for a NEW book. Addall also has a used-book search feature, but it's much less useful than...
http://www.eurobuch.com/ It's in German and it's clunky, but it's the largest database of used-book dealers in the world. Just type in the author and title, and you'll find page after page of deals from booksellers around the world, including thousands in the U.S. You can filter the results afterwards in order to find the cheapest offers. Unfortunately, everything is calculated in Euros, but the links are direct and you'll find the price in dollars when you get to the site you need.
http://www.amazon.com/ I don't actually buy very much from Amazon, and don't particularly like them as a company, but they tend to give you the most information about a new book before you buy it. The users' reviews range from idiotic to useful, but the best thing is the "Search inside this book!" feature, which allows you to browse through a book page by page. Unfortunately, not all publishers have permitted Amazon to do this (they're worried about their copyright, but I think that's absurd), so you won't find this feature with every book.
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/ Amazon won't always display the Table of Contents, but BN almost always does.
http://dogbert.abebooks.com/ A great used-book site based in the U.S. and composed of thousands of individual used-book dealers. All of Abebooks's listings are included in the Eurobuch database, so you don't have to use this site in order to hunt down a book, but I prefer to buy through Abebooks whenever I can. Ordering couldn't be easier, and establishing consortiums like this is just about the only way that independent booksellers are going to survive.
http://www.edwardrhamilton.com/ Probably the best remaindered-book dealer in the U.S. (A "remaindered" book is a book that the publisher is selling out at a bargain price because the cost of warehousing the book has exceeded the profits from selling it at the list price.) You have to pay by check, but the flat-rate shipping is a bargain. I've found lots and lots of gems through this site. If you prefer to pay by credit card, you can go to their sister site, hamiltonbook.com, but you'll pay more for shipping.
http://powells.com/ An outstanding bookstore in Portland, Oregon. Their entire inventory is included in Eurobuch.com (and also, I think, Abebooks), but it's worth checking out their own website; you might find things you weren't looking for.
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