Books on the Net
Hello. My name is David Lublin. And I'm a Book-a-holic.
Book buying has become one of the fastest growing areas of commerce on the internet. In particular, the internet has begun to revolutionize the ability to easily locate specific used books. I have listed some search engines for used books as well as some small and large dealers in new books.
Used Books
The links are directly to the search page, rather than to the home page, for all of the following used book sites.
BookFinder One of favorite search sites. Among other sites, it searches the Advanced Book Exchange and Bibliocity.
Bibliofind Searches about 3500 booksellers around the world.
HamiltonBook My friend and colleague, Steve Voss, likes this sites for relatively recently published books at a discount price.
Independent Bookstores
The Happy Bookseller Located in Columbia, South Carolina.
Olsson's Bookstore A local Washington, D.C. chain. I like their discount program.
New Books
Amazon The pioneer in internet sales. Buy my book for 30% off at this site.
Borders Great store up at White Flint Mall (it used to be I. Magnin's department store before they folded) with lots of academic and popular books. Buy my book for 30% off at their site.
Barnes and Noble Kind of like the Darth Vader of the book business; they are now trying to buy Ingram, the major book distributor. They don't currently discount my book. Guess where I don't like to shop?
Outside the United States
Amazon in the UK is the British branch of the American site.
Blackwell's in the UK is an academic bookseller with its most prominent shop located in Oxford, though there is also a fine one on Charing Cross Road. They have acquired Heffers of Cambridge (sort of like Harvard acquiring Yale?) in March 1999.
Waterstone's in the UK. Apparently, Waterstone's acquired Dillons mail-order internet site along with this excellent UK chain. (Does anyone know if Dillons of Gower Street has now become yet another giant Waterstone's?)
Hodges Figgis in Dublin, Ireland sits square across the street from Waterstone's on Dawson Street.
Librairie Garneau in Montreal, Canada is a French-language bookstore.
Chapters is great Canadian book chain that sells mostly English, but some French books. I found the best selection of books on Canadian politics was in their Ottawa store -- make sure to check both the English section on Canadian politics and the French section on Quebec history.
Indigo is a rapdily growing chain that tries to promote itself as the bookstore with not only a great inventory but flair and style. They have a great store on St. Catherine in Montreal. I found their staff very helpful.
Renouf sells Canadian and other political publications in Ottawa and Toronto.
Renaud-Bray is a Quebec bookstore.
The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author. The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by the American University. If you have any questions about this page, please email David Lublin at dlublin@american.edu. This page was last updated on January 9, 1999.