Better book-purchasing options
Apr. 6th, 2009 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
trixtahOne of the drawbacks about living in the antipodes is the ridiculous price of books here. Also, some books are simply not available, unless ordered at great extra expense, and shipping via Amazon is horribly expensive.
I've found a couple of excellent sites that provide good alternatives. One is Better World Books, which is a charity promoting literacy around the world. They sell both new and used books, they ship worldwide for less than $US4, and for free in the US, AND they do carbon offsets of any shipping they do.
Another is Book Depository, which is a UK-based company (yay for UK English editions! - I've been gritting my teeth about buying hard-to-find Diana Wynne Jones books from Amazon, and now I won't have to buy the Scholastic editions) that ships worldwide for free. Neither of these organisations ship super-fast airmail, but who cares? It sometimes takes me two weeks to get things sent from Sydney, and I've received things sent surface mail from the US in less than a week.
Now, the extra-bonus search engine, from an Australian perspective - and I think for kiwis as well, since prices for shipping to Oz or NZ from the UK and the US are pretty similar - is a metasearch engine, booko.com.au, which accumulates both the list price and shipping price from a number of sites, including locally-based (including the Melbourne Uni bookshop?) and overseas. So, The Vorkosigan Companion, which costs $AU48 from Collins Australia, and $36 including shipping from Amazon, can be ordered from Book Depository (ie. via the UK) for $30 bucks total. 20% off the Amazon price. I got Yes Means Yes from Amazon last month for over 30 bucks, when I could have gotten it from Better World for under $27 (that one is particularly irritating - 10% off and helping a worthy charity).
Even if you don't want to open accounts with a number of vendors, you can still use the booko search engine, and just select from the vendors you're happy to do business with. I've got BWB and BD accounts underway as we speak. Booko does DVD searches as well, and they have a listing for the Collector's Edition of When Night Is Falling - gah, I only bought the original DVD (and I'm still not sure if the Region 4 copy I have was derived from the cut US version, or from the "unrated" Canadian one) a couple of years back - which has the Amazon price only $2 more expensive than the cheapest offering - hardly worth creating another account for that.
I've found a couple of excellent sites that provide good alternatives. One is Better World Books, which is a charity promoting literacy around the world. They sell both new and used books, they ship worldwide for less than $US4, and for free in the US, AND they do carbon offsets of any shipping they do.
Another is Book Depository, which is a UK-based company (yay for UK English editions! - I've been gritting my teeth about buying hard-to-find Diana Wynne Jones books from Amazon, and now I won't have to buy the Scholastic editions) that ships worldwide for free. Neither of these organisations ship super-fast airmail, but who cares? It sometimes takes me two weeks to get things sent from Sydney, and I've received things sent surface mail from the US in less than a week.
Now, the extra-bonus search engine, from an Australian perspective - and I think for kiwis as well, since prices for shipping to Oz or NZ from the UK and the US are pretty similar - is a metasearch engine, booko.com.au, which accumulates both the list price and shipping price from a number of sites, including locally-based (including the Melbourne Uni bookshop?) and overseas. So, The Vorkosigan Companion, which costs $AU48 from Collins Australia, and $36 including shipping from Amazon, can be ordered from Book Depository (ie. via the UK) for $30 bucks total. 20% off the Amazon price. I got Yes Means Yes from Amazon last month for over 30 bucks, when I could have gotten it from Better World for under $27 (that one is particularly irritating - 10% off and helping a worthy charity).
Even if you don't want to open accounts with a number of vendors, you can still use the booko search engine, and just select from the vendors you're happy to do business with. I've got BWB and BD accounts underway as we speak. Booko does DVD searches as well, and they have a listing for the Collector's Edition of When Night Is Falling - gah, I only bought the original DVD (and I'm still not sure if the Region 4 copy I have was derived from the cut US version, or from the "unrated" Canadian one) a couple of years back - which has the Amazon price only $2 more expensive than the cheapest offering - hardly worth creating another account for that.
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(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-06 02:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-07 12:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-06 03:04 pm (UTC)The GST on books is one of the reasons to hate John Howard until the day I die. I've found that when exchange rates are okay, the cost of book + shipping from amazon is the same as buying paperback here, so when the choice is between ordering through a store and ordering it myself, I usually head to amazon.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-06 03:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-07 12:38 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-07 04:34 am (UTC).....Amazon US.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-07 12:41 pm (UTC)And you hopefully won't have that problem of finding it somewhere else for half the price, two days after they shipped it (that's always happening to me).
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-07 08:54 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-07 12:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-07 12:37 pm (UTC)If you need another source for new books from the US, try deepdiscount.com. I've been ordering books more and more books from them as Borders puts less and less books on the shelves of the local store. The last time I checked, their shipping rates to the rest of the world were a lot better than Amazon's.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-07 12:43 pm (UTC)Thanks for the tip about Deep Discount - handily, it's on the booko metasearch engine as well!
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-15 08:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-18 05:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-18 01:11 pm (UTC)Thx for the Mention
Date: 2009-04-07 03:09 pm (UTC)Hey RR, thanks for mentioning Better World Books. Please feel free to share coupon code 'goodreading' with your readers. It will get you 10% off your first order when entered during checkout.
BTW, Booko is showing the wrong price for The Vorkosigan Companion on Better World Books - we actually have it for $19.48 new (add $3.97 for international shipping, shipping in the US is free). I'll have to check out why they're showing the wrong price - meanwhile it may pay to check us directly.
Happy Reading!
John
BWB Marketing Guy
Re: Thx for the Mention
Date: 2009-04-08 12:15 pm (UTC)And no worries re the confusion about the prices - it's handy for us to have it in the local $$$ so we don't have to contend with that calculation as well, as you can imagine. :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-07 09:30 pm (UTC)John
BWB Marketing Guy
(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 05:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-04-13 09:31 am (UTC)