Where do you buy books in US?

[Ram kovis]

I genereally buy them in Amazon.
Are there any other stores/online shops , which offer books for lesser price?

Thanks
Ram
[ October 20, 2006: Message edited by: Ram kovis ]

[vasu maj]

I use bookpool for technical books

[Jeroen T Wenting]

I usually go to a bookstore

[Guy Allard]

Tech books, you mean?

The bookpool people are very competitive if what you need is in stock.

I am lucky, I can go to one of the retail places, pay full price and my boss reimburses me.

For non tech stuff .... flea markets are very good I find.

Guy
[ October 20, 2006: Message edited by: Guy Allard ]

[Jim Yingst]

[Guy]: The bookpool people are very competitive if what you need is in stock.

From my experience, even if what you need is not in stock at the time you order it, chances are pretty good it will be back in stock within a couple days. At least for popular recent books - bookpool will diligently report an item as out of stock any time they don't have any in a warehouse at that instant - but chances are they've already got additional copies on the way. Don't let "out of stock" stop you from ordering something there.

To be fair, you can't guarantee an out of stock item will get back in stock immediately. I usually put together orders of three or more books at once (saving on shipping costs). If one gets delayed too much, I'm willing to cancel it and ship the remainder. But really, that doesn't happen often, because bookpool restocks fairly promptly.

[Marc Peabody]

I compare prices at addall.com and find the cheapest used books are usually at half.com and the cheapest new ones are usually at buy.com.

[Kishore Dandu]

nerdbooks.com in dallas fits the bill for me( i buy used books from Amazon.com once in a while though)

[Rachil Chandran]

You get books for cheap sometimes in the ebay auctions.

But you need to be skilled in bidding. The price, I ve found hardly changes in the last couple of hours but changes repidly in increments of $1.00 for the last few seconds.

As ususal, timimg is everything

[Ram kovis]

wow ..
Looks like, we can get non-technical books at cheaper prices in half.com.

thanks for all the suggestions.. Need to buy some books!!!

[Dave Lenton]

It looks like on line buying is becoming increasingly the way in which people buy books. While it is great that books are becoming cheaper and easier to buy, it will be a shame if many book shops go out of business. There's something very pleasurable about browsing around a books shop, and being able to flick through books before buying them. I could spend hours in some large books shops, just poking around to see what they have got.

Despite that, what I usually end up doing is leaving the shop and then going and ordering the same books for less money from Amazon.

I suppose there will always be a market for second hand book shops, although Amazon are doing their best to get in there as well. The difference with second hand books is that people often will want to see what quality they have before buying them, so hopefully these shops will continue.

[vasu maj]

I hope not to see all book shops closed in the near future
I love spending my time at book shops and libraries.
Wolfgang books in Phoenixville PA is one of the book shops that I visit often and buy from them even if they are pricier than Amazon, just to support them.
They do book readings by authors once in a while, offer coffee and snacks and a nice place to just sit and relax with a book. It is a beautiful energy.. and they are not Borders or Barnes and Noble kind of chain shope where everyone is an employee and they just don't care.

Also second hand books often have a personality of their own. You can see from the underlines and sometimes comments and the names.. They provide a richer experience than the freshly printed ones.

My two cents for whatever it is worth !

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Jeroen T Wenting wrote:I usually go to a bookstore

Me too. I like to go to the bookstore to browse/see what's around. So when I am going to buy a book, I like to support the local bookstore. In fact, I'm going tomorrow to pick up a book I ordered there.

[Jesper de Jong]

Thread-from-2006 alert.

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

That's ok. The topic is still relevant.