Paperbacks

@f00l Where have you and the rest of coven shifted the trump discourse to?

@cranky1950

I suppose the 4th of July and the various birthdays quieted us temporarily.

I’m still on the case, tho.

Cambridge Analytica LLC

Hmmmmm.

@moondrake I don’t think tracknewbook covers paperbacks. I got excited about Book Buzzes, but it doesn’t seem to be in existence anymore.

@moondrake

Why Abebooks in particular? Do you just like the way the site works, or is there some more specific reason?

@f00l So far their overall prices have beaten any others I comparison shopped against, notably about 80% of the time their price beat Amazon. They have depth of stock so there are usually multiple copies available and the books have come in a timely manner and have been correct and as described. I’m certainly receptive to other sites, but I find it easier to assess a group of sites and then pick one to use rather than saving a dollar here by researching and tracking purchases across multiple sites.if you have a site you favor, by all means point me at it and I’ll compare.

@moondrake

You might take a look at

www.bookfinder.com
www.alibris.com

They are similar to Amazon marketplace, Abebooks, half.com, and eBay, in the and that they create a shopping cart and display and search function for all sorts of book sellers.

Both are easy to use. Bookfinder is my fav. Not for any big reason except that they keep various editions separate.

Many booksellers list all their inventory on all these sites. I think if you are a bookseller, you can get software that keeps track of what sells, and cancels the offerings in other sites when something sells on one site.

Fwiw, Amazon has owned Abebooks gr about a decade. That’s one reason I don’t favor it. But nothing against it; it’s a good site. It’s just that Amazon is already so big.

You will see the same bookseller names cropping up on all of them.

@moondrake I will second both of the sites @f00l mentioned, albeit potentially in the reverse order. My mother’s job largely consists of pricing second-hand books, and alibris is her go-to, as far as an exhaustive search of used marketplaces is concerned, and bookfinder is her go-to if alibris is down.

@moondrake Try betterworldbooks.com They have a great selection and prices for all kinds of used books, and your purchases also contribute to literacy around the woild- you can even do carbon neutral shipping, if that’s your bent.

@PhysAssist
@moondrake

Better World Books is one of the sellers I buy from a lot. I usually find their listings on the Amazon marketplace or on one of the search sites mentioned above.

They’re excellent.

@f00l @PhysAssist Some of my books come from them. I do want an aggregator site, I don’t want to spend a lot of time going site to site looking for my title. One thing I like about ABE is the format. There will be 20 copies of my book listed, so I can easily say, “for .25 more I can upgrade from good to like new condition”. Their search engine isn’t strong, though. I didn’t know A Better World was charitable, I’ll factor that in the future. I know I’ve used Alibri before, don’t recall why I chose ABE over them, will look again. Don’t think I’ve tried bookfinder.

@moondrake
With bookfinder you can specify ISBN, 1st Ed or not, signed, hardback or paperback, and a bunch of other things. The only PITA you have to get used to is that it separates out every edition, so you often get a bunch of different listings for a single book.

(Even something newly published last week will probably have US and foreign editions.)

after you choose a given edition, there results much like Alibris or Abebooks.

Amazon 3rd party results, including Amazon.jp and Amazon.ca and all that, shows up there also. This can really matter, if there book is rare.

Bookfinder does not have a search switch for audiobooks, let alone for abridged vs unabridged. So you have to have the ISBN to search for them. This can usually be gotten from Amazon or from Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.ca even in rare cases.

Fortunately, abridged audiobooks, which dominated the market during the cassette era, are seriously fading as a market factor.

Bookfinder only does books books afaik. No CDs, no video. I think.

@moondrake Then I must’ve been a super-cheapskate, or just another thief. I lived near a library & whenever I happen by I would reach into a return container & pull out 2 or 3 random books. Oops, my bad! Sorry!! I returned them though.

@decoratedwarvet Maybe you can try Oprah. I’m just saying; she does have a bookclub.

@decoratedwarvet I hope people weren’t fined because their books didn’t get returned on time. I went for many years without a library card because I loaned a library book checked out in my name to someone who promised to return it and did not, and the fees and fines and replacement cost of the book added up to a month’s groceries.

@moondrake I am sorry for your bad experience, but I can’t be sorry because you trusted the wrong person. As for the library (in the US), as I said, it was very close + I said that I returned them, unlike your friend, and in this country if your book is one or two days late you don’t pay a fine if you talk to them nicely, unless it is, like, $ 0.50 per day, maybe less. I lost a book I checked outone time because, as I explained to the very nice & understanding librarian, I left it in my brother’s car & on a trip to Texas, he had a wreck. Book lost, gone, burned up. I volunteered to pay the $19.98 for the book, no fine, no jail-time, and compassion for a Combat Vet. The book was about Vietnam. I’m sorry.

@decoratedwarvet
The fine will cost the person who borrowed the book frustration and irritation at the least if your actions make the book get checked in late.

My local libraries are setup to make your “borrowing technique” difficult.

Why not just check out the books yourself? Or join up with one of the free book lending societies?

@decoratedwarvet That’s disappointing to read. You probably caused their books to be late (and incur fines) and I can’t imagine you were very prompt returning their books. Shame on you.

@f00l Is it possible for you to create a differently named account to use only for book notifications?

The Amazon “follow this author” thing sends you an email when a new book by said author is available. I like it for that as well as for the occasional freebies or discounts authors with “follow” pages send to their mailing list.

@OldCatLady Is it the indie bookstore that fairly frequently has authors speaking and autographing?

And are you familiar with Chamblins?

@magic_cave I know Chamblin’s very well indeed, both locations. I currently have a small credit balance, but I can fix that in no time flat. The Andrews/Frost signing is in Neptune Beach at The Bookmark, and I think they’re in Orlando the same week.

@Cerridwyn
It’s a word in the song title for an excellent Beatles song.

@f00l okay cool

@Cerridwyn It’s when you make an ereader case out of something called a “book”.

@Cerridwyn It is a soft cover, usually smaller book compared to the hard cover copy

@decoratedwarvet
I am on my 4th - no wait 5th - e-reader. The first was the hardest. I wanted something better than a lap top to read the e-text’s the university I taught for was providing us instead of what i thought of as the time as ‘real books’ . It was a Sony, e-ink, with a built in light, not a back light per se, but not one that was on top of it either.

It didn’t take me long to find other uses for it. I traveled a fair bit between California and the east coast in those days. And I read all the time. So I was packing so much weight in books for the trips it was insane. One e-reader dropped my travel weight by 10+ pounds, depending on the length of the trip.

It was dying (had been in twice for repair) when the first color reader (Nook Color) came out. I pre-ordered it and picked it up on the day of release. I haven’t looked back.

I am still surrounded, even now as I type, with books and books. And I sold or donated about 2 thousand of them when I moved 2 years ago.

Part of me still misses paper, but more of me embraces the convenience of never being without more than 1 book

@Cerridwyn
I used to have to give away at least 500-1000 books per decade, sometimes several times per decade.

I still own way too many and should go thru them and take 1/2 of them to Half Price Books or a charity.

My buying has lately slowed down to what I actually want to keep around, or what is not available in e-format, or what the library does not have. And I own (cassette, cd, or digital download) so many audiobooks that it’s embarrassing.

As for e-book sources, most of them not from the library (Overdrive app) are Kindle or Nook books. I own Kindle and Nook devices and won’t get rid of any of them, including the 1st gen ones. For some reason I still love the devices I no longer use. (You avoid Amazon on principle, right?)

I do miss being surrounded by piles of books, even tho I shouldn’t miss that, because I am still surrounded by piles of books.

Most of my e-reading is actually done on a smartphone. I really like it when I can get the smartphone to read a book to me aloud, and do a decent job of it.

Most of my physical book purchases come from Ebay or are something I find on Bookfinder.

/image “love books”