Used book buying guide

March 28, 2006 2:55 PM

What is the cheapest and easiest way to buy a specific group of used books?

I currently maintain a list of books that I would like to read. (Yes, my wife does tease me about it) There are over 100 books on the list and most of those are in series. I recently got a job and I will have a real income for the first time in my life. I would rather own books than just use the library so I want to start buying books off of my list. There are too many to just buy them all new, but I thought that I could buy them used, but in groups (say 5-20 at a time). I know about half.com and Amazon, but for each of those sites I have to search for a single book and then it shows me a list of sellers. Potentially for each book I would have to use a different individual seller. Is there a way to search multiple books across multiple sellers? If not, are there particularly good used bookstores with great selections?

In an ideal world I could have something like my Amazon wishlist, but it would also show me items grouped by seller, so I could know which outlet carries the most books and that way I could save on shipping costs by grouping things together.

Any ideas or help would be useful. Thanks in advance.

posted by bove to shopping (21 comments total)

For a good used bookstore with great selection, try Powells.com. They seem to have just about everything you could want, both new and used. I've ordered from them a couple times in the past and no complaints.
posted by Gortuk at 3:07 PM on March 28, 2006

Try searching for a book in a series, then looking through the seller's inventory on abebooks.com or Alibris.com.
posted by Dasein at 3:14 PM on March 28, 2006

Second Powells.com
posted by luneray at 3:14 PM on March 28, 2006

Try also Bookfinder, which will allow you to do searches across multiple booksellers, some of which (Alibris, Abebooks) are themselves conglomerates of independent booksellers.
posted by Sonny Jim at 3:16 PM on March 28, 2006

Third Powells and second Alibris. The Strand here in NYC is also quite good.
posted by CRM114 at 3:17 PM on March 28, 2006

So far, it sounds like I should just pick one seller (Like Powells or Alibris) and buy whatever they have.

I guess I was hoping for some magical app/website that would search multiple sellers on multiple books and then give me some kind of grid by seller. So, for instance I could search for all of Lawrence Block's Evan Tanner series, and then the website would show me which used bookstores had all of the books in the series and then the total price.

However, if there are more recommendations for stores I would love to get them.
posted by bove at 3:20 PM on March 28, 2006

I can't think of an automated way to do this.

My brother owns a used bookstore (brick-and-mortar and online) and though I think it would be in poor taste to link to him here I'll ask him if he knows of such a method.
posted by sourwookie at 3:25 PM on March 28, 2006

Search abebooks for the most popular book on the list, find the seller with the largest inventory that is selling the title, then search the rest of his inventory for other books you need. That's the easiest way I can think of.
posted by fire&wings at 3:28 PM on March 28, 2006

I second the Powells.com recommendation. I also like the Strand bookstore in NYC (strandbooks.com). They have a huge selection of used books and they have lots of new books at half price. I order from them about once a month and their service is very good. If they don't have a book you want, you can list it on their site and they'll notify you when it comes in. Powell's does this too.

I've used alibris.com in the past but was very unimpressed with their service and would not recommend them.
posted by Kangaroo at 3:43 PM on March 28, 2006

Buying used from individual booksellers will cost you a lot more in postage. Why don't you post a list of "books wanted" on a website, as you find a book you want on, say, amazon, invite the seller to sell you other books on your list and combine postage? Take your wanted list to local used bookstores, too.
posted by theora55 at 4:41 PM on March 28, 2006

Perhaps not quite what you're looking for, but have you tried eBay itself? Many eBay booksellers will sell assorted books in lots, or an entire series at once. Search for whatever book you're interested in, and try to see if there's a lot on auction with that book and others that you want.
posted by Electric Elf at 5:02 PM on March 28, 2006

ABEBOOKS.COM While they may not always be the cheapest, they are networked to used bookstores all over creation.
posted by Pressed Rat at 6:48 PM on March 28, 2006

There is also isbn.nu which will give you the prices-by-seller for a title/isbn/author/subject. It's similar to the others except that the easy URLs for the books [here is one: http://isbn.nu/0786416084] make it a little easier to hammer through a set of ISBNs and I bet there would be a handy way to batch search the way you wanted to, but it's a little outside of my abilities.
posted by jessamyn at 6:57 PM on March 28, 2006

Thanks for the comments and recommendations so far. All of the places mentioned allow me to search through different booksellers and compare their inventories, but I was hoping for an easier way, especially with over 100 books. I guess that is not possible, but I appreciate the help.
posted by bove at 7:29 PM on March 28, 2006

I have had decent luck with Half.com. The shipping charges will be atrocious since you are having stuff shipped from a lot of different sellers, but in many cases the prices of the books themselves are so low as to make this moot. If a trade paperback costs $0.75, do you really care that you're paying $4 to ship it? No, you do not, because it's still a third of what it would cost new. Plus you can get 3% back on your order by entering through through FatWallet.com.
posted by kindall at 7:37 PM on March 28, 2006

I've ordered many books from Half.com. They used to have a wonderful feature where you could pre-order a small number (four?) books, setting price and condition thresholds for an automatic purchase. They seem to have done away with that, though, leaving just the wishlist feature. Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong; I've received three consecutive notifications of a particular book on my wishlist being listed for a very good price but someone else has grabbed it each and every time I check in. Still, it's a really great site.

I love Powell's too, and definitely recommend them as a good place to buy. I think they may still be the best online bookstore I've seen in terms of exposing you to serendipitous discoveries. And their retail store is supposedly absolutely amazing.

Finally, take a look at Best Book Buys, an old favorite comparison-shopping site for books.
posted by Songdog at 8:40 PM on March 28, 2006

We might be able to help better if you told us the names of any series you're looking for.
posted by mediareport at 6:16 AM on March 29, 2006

I have run into this problem also. The books in a series can be cheap, but the shipping charges from multiple sources ruins the overall deal. And even if you could find a seller on Half.com or Amazon with all of the books in your series, it wouldn't matter since they don't discount your shipping charge in those kinds of instances (half.com used to, but I think they have both changed).

So option 1 is to work through a used book seller who will calculate this shipping intelligently. Unfortunately it is not always easy to find the bookseller with the right inventory. This is even more complicated by the fact that some sellers may not list all of their used mass market paperbacks onlne since the margins are so low. Option 2 is to look on eBay. Sometimes people will sell a series of books together on eBay and the overall savings is significant.

I have done it myself a few times. If you want to sell stuff on Amazon of Half.com, often the asking price for more popular books or CDs is too low to make any money after the commision is taken out. So it makes sense to list package deals on eBay. Unfortunately for the seller these kinds of listings take a little more work than they might otherwise if eBay were to better anticipate these kinds of sales. eBay lets you input a single item (UPC code, etc) and utilize their database for the photo and listing. But they don't make it possible to list multiple UPCs under a singe "item," so the seller has to describe and photograph it the old fashioned way. If eBay were to change their system a little bit they could encourage this type of sale a little more.
posted by Tallguy at 6:16 AM on March 29, 2006

CRM114 above links to The Strand's website. Going to the store and looking for specific books can be frustrating, but their website actually works very similar to how Amazon deals with new books. You can order the books used or new, but even if they're used it's for a set price (unlike Amazon and others which lists "sellers"), and really "new" still means used, as in sold to them second-hand, just never read, so it's still cheap. If you choose a book they don't currently have, you can still order it and they will notify and charge you when it's available. And if you do happen to live in New York, you can choose for them to hold it for you at either of their stores, avoiding shipping costs. It sounds like exactly the kind of service you're looking for.

Also, I ordered a book there once and ended up with a signed copy, which was a pretty cool surprise. Even though it's kind of sad that someone had their copy signed and then sold it to the Strand.
posted by lampoil at 7:55 AM on March 29, 2006

mediareport: Here you go (this is a summary):

Lawrence Block: Evan Tanner series, Mathew Scudder series
James Clavell: Most of his Asian saga
Leo Frankowski: Cross Time Engineer series
Gregory McDonald: Fletch series
Robert Parker: Spenser series
S.M. Stirling: Sea of Time series
David Weber: Honor Harrington series

kindall: Your point about half.com is exactly right. Sometimes the prices are low enough that multiple shipping charges are still a good deal.

I have been checking out Powells and some of the other sites mentioned, but they don't have nearly the selection (at the low prices) that I can find at half.com or Amazon's used sellers. I will definitely check out the Strand as well.

Thanks again
posted by bove at 9:38 AM on March 29, 2006

Those are pretty common series, bove; any of the big used bookstores around the country should have most if not all of them for you to order at one sitting. Hell, I work at a small store and we can probably get you half of most of those on any given day.
posted by mediareport at 11:34 PM on March 29, 2006