Very Good (Printed) Book Search Site

[steeladept]

As requested....

Search and Compare among 40+ sites, 20,000 sellers, millions of books!

I learned of AddAll.com while I was in college and I credit this site with singlehandedly saving me hundreds of dollars (unfortunately I didn't learn about it in my early years of college or it could have been a thousand or more).  This site does what it says, but has now expanded to include music, movies, magazines, and most recently credit card offers.  While I have not used it for anything other than books, I can attest to the value of the searches.  It conveniently allows you to search for books by keyword, title, author, and (most valuable to students) ISBN.

Very Good (Printed) Book Search Site

A suggestion on usage for the students out there...Go to the bookstore when the book list is first published.  Get the ISBN numbers off the listings, then search here.  I found on average I was paying about 30% of my school bookstore prices if I could get them used, and about 60% new.  Doing it this way guarantees you get the exact same edition.  The only books I ever bought at the school bookstore were school publications (often handbooks that the teachers put together and published locally only).

Very Good (Printed) Book Search Site

Best of all, AddAll will determine the prices for you AFTER calculating shipping.  Very handy for those sites that lure you in with low cost goods, but are actually more expensive because they charge high shipping rates.  Lastly, you can link to the site to buy the book.  Here is an example of the results:

Very Good (Printed) Book Search Site

All in all, a VERY useful site.

all pictures from http://www.addall.com

[Carol Haynes]

Wow - that's neat.

I put in a book and gave UK details - not only did it find 29 sources for the book but some were cheaper based in other countries! Not only that it checks used prices too.

Excellent find - I will definitely use it in future for researching prices.

Edit: One word of caution though - searching on an author doesn't necessarily bring up all possible titles (even when I know some of those titles are listed and available at Amazon).

Still a good first stop though - especially if using title search and pretty good on the "Used Book Search" option.

[steeladept]

Thanks for the tip on Authors.  I never search that way...I typically search by title or ISBN.  I too was surprised about where the books come from cheapest.  When I got my college books, most came either from the UK or Germany of all places.  Going to the US, that kind of shocked me.

[Darwin]

When I was an undergrad I discovered during second year that a good 50% of the books I needed were at the Goodwill (a chain of charity shops in Canada and the US that sadly pulled out of my region about 15 years ago - once got an 18k ladies Rolex for 99 cents. I kid you not; paid $70 to get it running and my sister is still wearing it. A couple of years later I got my own). My best "score" was a very slender, and flimsy, volume on anthropological research methods that was available for over $80 in the University bookstore. I paid 10 cents for it. Ditto a book for a different class but in the same series. It's price was $75 and I paid 10 cents for it as well.

Half the fun of being a student if figuring out how to beat the extortionate book costs!

[steeladept]

Half the fun of being a student if figuring out how to beat the extortionate book costs!

-Darwin (June 11, 2007, 06:55 PM)

Fun you call it?

[Darwin]

Half the fun of being a student if figuring out how to beat the extortionate book costs!

-Darwin (June 11, 2007, 06:55 PM)

Fun you call it?

-steeladept (June 11, 2007, 10:43 PM)

That statement does smack of the same insensitivity displayed by my Lit 12 teacher in high school who always said: "enjoy your test" before we sat an exam!