OFF: Books (was Re: A good souce for HW cds/lps??)

[Jonathan Jarrett]

On Thu, Nov 29, 2001 at 11:01:58AM +0000, M Holmes typed out:
> K Henderson writes:
>
> > Gemm.com isn't a 'store', but rather a large consortium of other generally
> > independant-type mail order businesses that have all agreed to put their own
> > catalogs into the Gemm.com system in order to provide users a quick way of
> > searching for a particular item throughout many a business.
> >
> > But it's a fabulous device to have available and I wish that more dealers
> > that I commonly order from were part of it.
>
> Yep, these things are great. I've also been using Bibliofind.com
> (recently acquired by Yahoo?) to find out of print books with
> considerable success.

        I worked in this area for most of last year... Bibliofind got
bought by Amazon, and are now much less use, principally because if a
search fails it dumps you in the main Amazon search pages; it only
searches the OOP stock if you start the search from the
Bibliofind web-page. Quite why they bothered to acquire and then make it
near unusable is beyond me.

        However, there are others. The ones I'd recommend are ABE Books
<http://www.abebooks.com> or for the really difficult stuff the unwieldy
and massive Bookfinder <http://www.bookfinder.com>. Both are Gemm-like
listings sites for many booksellers, but Bookfinder is more European; ABE
itself lists through it, but as I say it's almost too large to use (which
isn't to say you can't defeat it every now and then).

        Once you get out of English-language it gets a bit more
particular: ZVAB <http://www.zvab.com> is pretty good for German stuff,
for French stuff the only one I know of that doesn't list through ABE is
Galaxidion <http://www.galaxidion.com> but they're not very big; in Spain
there's Iberlibro <http://www.iberlibro.com>. If you can't pick up what
you're after through one of these you probably need a specialist.

        Bear in mind that most people who offer a booksearch service are
just going to go to these search engines and charge a tenner extra for the
privilege. Save yourself the money, is my advice. Yours,
                                                          Jon

ObCD: I. E. M. - _Have Come For Your Children_
--
        Jonathan Jarrett                Birkbeck College, London
                 jjarrett at chiark.greenend.org.uk
        --------------------------------------------------------
  "The large print giveth and the small print taketh away." (Tom Waits)