My friends think that I personally am a big factor in keeping Amazon (.com and UK) in the black. I don't blame them. In the past four years I've added new book cases three times. Big book cases, floor to ceiling.
But I've just found out that for most books, AbeBooks (.com or UK) is far cheaper than Amazon. And this is not just for used books. Many new books are like 30% cheaper than at Amazon! And I have heard that when shipping used books they are usually faster than Amazon because they ship from the sub-contractor directly.
They do have two drawbacks: no one-click buying, and no book reviews. But the latter you can always find on many other sites, and I don't think one-click justifies that huge price increase.
I second this! I too am a long time Amazon patron (with over 1000 books bought) who've recently discovered it's not the only place to shop. I haven't used AbeBooks to buy new books per se, but what I've discovered is that from AbeBooks you can often get a more valuable copy of the book for the same price --- often a hardcover 1st ed. for the price of Amazon's recently issued cheap paperback.
ReplyDeleteFor out of print titles, AbeBooks is clearly a better place to shop than Amazon's 3rd party sellers. The grading descriptions tend to me more accurate, and there are almost always more choices for editions and sources.
Thanks for the hint Captain Eo, I'll give Abe a try in new books too.