WhereToBuyBooks

Last edit September 22, 2014
Where's a good place to buy books?

This site is an AmazonAssociate. On the other hand, you may wish to BoycottAmazon (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/amazon.html -- but: "The FSF decided to end its boycott of Amazon in September 2002.").

Search engines to find books online, at a discount:

General used book sellers:

Clearing house for independent booksellers (often with on-line sales and world-wide distribution available) excellent for rare, obscure or out-of-print

Another general used book site. Alibris acts as a middle-man for their dealers, giving more of a one-stop shop than Advanced Book Exchange. I find their prices tend to be higher, however.

Offers both new and used books at fair prices. Used books reasonably graded for wear. Has an affiliates program last time I looked. If it matters to you, they also employ union members.

Individual ".com" book sellers: For technical books, especially computer-related:
  • http://www.bookpool.com Their shipping is cheap, while also fast (DHL Worldwide Express, 5-7 days). Especially important for us European types. When they have it (which is very often not the case), then they're cheapest.

for Canadians:

I enjoy browsing my local bookstore, and am willing to pay "extra" now and then to see the store preserved. A world without bookstores would be a sad place. -- DaveSmith

Not to mention that when you need (or want) a book NOW, online shopping don't cut it.

Depends. If a local bookshop happens to have the book in stock, you save one day by buying it "physically". If they don't and some online bookshop does, you probably get it much faster by buying online. Of course, if you just want "a book" and don't care what book ... -- GarethMcCaughan

My favorite online bookseller is http://www.booksamillion.com. They simply have a huge catalog of books and nothing else. You won't be directed to a Pokemon auction when looking for a Perl book. Their prices tend to be the best if you join the $5/year millionaire's club.

I'll often find books on Amazon using their excellent tools (customer reviews and showing you common purchases), then I'll buy them at http://www.booksamillion.com.

-- JimLipsey

The only problem is that Bookpool is 3 months behind in getting new technical books. -- sg

I have not found that to be the case at all. -- Anonymous Lurker

I used a bookmark on the Netscape Personal Toolbar Folder programmed so that if I select an ISBN on the page and click the bookmark, it goes to addall.com and starts the search immediately. It is modified from code found at http://www.google.com/options/buttons.html. 

 javascript:q=document.getSelection();if(!q){void(q=prompt('Enter ISBN',''))};q=q.replace(/
 */g,"");if(q)location.href='http://www2.addall.com/New/submitNew.cgi?location=10000&state=PA&dispCurr=USD&type=ISBN&query='+escape(q)
I have a similar one for title searches.

-- EdwardHuff

[I suggest putting the above in a bookmarklet page.]

Moved From AmazonAssociate:

I just bought a bunch of books and only one of them had an ISBN reference - even the ChristopherAlexander books hadn't. (Putting this comment here will get this page into the RecentChanges list, which should bring it to newcomer's attention, at least for a while. Sneaky, huh?) -- DaveHarris

Readers in Canada should note that http://www.chapters.ca delivers books cheaper and quicker than Amazon. Amazon is amazing within the US. However their ex-USA shipping charges are excessive, and factoring in the customs expenses and delays, chapters.ca saves you about a day and C$10 a book. -- StevenBlack (whose website is, nonetheless, also an Amazon associate).

There are quite a few places WhereToBuyBooks. Frequently the savings is so much that PortlandPatternRepository would do much better if you sent them the difference rather than using Amazon. This might be accomplished using Pay Pal. http://www.paypal.com

While the auto-link to Amazon for ISBN numbers is useful, a link to a price comparison site would be even more useful. Amazon is rarely the cheapest source for any given book, and the differences in price are some times substantial. I recently bought a Macroeconomics text book ISBN 013095733X from a UK book seller for $41.91, including shipping from Europe to California. The same book would cost $69.30 (include shipping) from Amazon US. Even ordering it from Amazon UK would have been considerably cheaper than Amazon US.

I've noticed that http://www.abookbargain.com/ has been a [BrokenLink] for some time now. I have to assume that they went out of business quite some time ago.

I commonly use BookFinder and AddAll when shopping for books. ...generally with slightly better results from BookFinder, and I like the clear separation of new and used books in its interface.

I've tried AscesBookfinder / Deal Time, from time to time, but they don't seem to really be any good at finding books.

I tried out BookAse, and found... [visited site only, did not purchase]
  • It has a really slick user interface. Very pretty and slick.
  • It doesn't have nearly the coverage of BookFinder, but it does sometimes find better deals that any of the others.

...except maybe http://isbn.nu/<isbn#> I'll have to include isbn.nu in my book searches in the future! -- JeffGrigg

CategoryBooks