Buying Books on the Internet

Powell Books here in Portland may be the best one-stop browsing bookstore in the world, but they’re all we've got, and they don’t stock everything. One of my main areas of interest, the Mongol Empire, is a pretty slow-moving area of study, and books published 130 years ago (e.g.,  Raverty’s translation of Juzjani, or D’Ohsson’s history) can still be usable resources. My book-buying needs are pretty specialized.
 

So when I first became aware of internet bookselling and happened to have some money in my pocket,  I went on an tear. In acouple of years I spent $3000 or more buying out-of-print books I’d been looking for years or even decades -- in many cases paying normal prices for books I’d only ever seen listed (if at all) for $200 or more each.

Over the years I’ve developed my own lore, which I'm sharing here, but I’m also trying to find out a few things from my vast readership. I’m especially interested in finding better sources for books in Spanish and in Chinese, and in finding out why shipping from Europe seems to be both slower and more expensive than shipping from other equally-distant parts of the world, such as India and Australia. (Or is it just my imagination?)

My first stop is always Bookfinder.com, which finds sellers stocking any given title and is good for books in English, French, German, and Italian (but not Spanish).  Once I’ve pulled up a list on Bookfinder, I look for the ABE booksellers there.  ABE is an umbrella for thousands of small booksellers, and you will ultimately be buying from one of them. (Bookfinder will direct you to Amazon if they’re a good source, but ABE is usually the best -- preferable to Amazon, Alibris, BookAvenue, Half.com, Barnes & Noble, or any of the others. I’ve never had a bad experience with ABE).

Elibron publishes cheap reprints of old public-domain books in English, French, and other languages. They have a very wide selection – 200 Trollope titles by five Trollopes, the complete Summa Theologica, lots of stuff by Swedenborg, hundreds of old travel books, and much more. The books I bought from them were very well-made, though they seem to be moving to mostly e-books.

Labyrinth Sale annex has a great selection of remaindered academic books, and they also send out a catalog.

I might mention that there are also many cheap reprints available from India, especially books on Buddhism, Hinduism, and Orientalism, but I don’t know of a central source.

For Chinese books and books about China I go to  Phenix / Sinobiblia in France. They have a great selection and send out a very helpful catalog, and customer service is great. Shipping is very expensive, but not too slow --  though they do seem to send it a very, very slow, still pretty expensive way unless you specifically ask them. East Wind Books (1435 A Stockton, San Francisco) is also great, but they aren’t on the internet and are only so-so for mail order. According to this  link,  Oriental Culture Enterprises (13-17 Elizabeth St., NYC) is also very good. They’re not on the internet, and I’ve never bought there.

For French books I go first to Amazon Canada since shipping will be faster if they have it in stock. In England Grant and Cutler sells books from many languages, though I’ve never used them and British shipping always seems slow. FNAC has a good list of Portuguese books and my one experience with them was good, but also slow (and I've just been told it's good for French books too).

Please feel free to add comments on any information you have about good book-buying resources of all kinds, including sources for books in exotic languages which almost no one reads.

http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~ddeschen/dailymuse.html

http://www.zvab.com/SESSz154196272511116818718/gr2/en/index.html

http://www.galaxidion.com/home/index.php

UPDATE:

I have only done a little checking of the links below. Caveat emptor.

SEARCHES:

http://www.addall.com/used/ Search interface like Bookfinder.*

http://www.fetchbook.info *

http://www.bestwebbuys.com/books/ (This one does not seem to link to ABE books, so not recommended.)

http://seekbooks.com.au/ Australian company.

REMAINDERS:

http://www.scholarsbookshelf.com Scholarly remainders (good catalogs)

http://www.edwardrhamilton.com/ Remainders (hodgepodge catalog)

GENERAL FOREIGN LANGUAGE / ACADEMIC:

http://www.Schoenhofs.com Cambridge, MA: scholarly foreign language books. *

http://www.thorntonsbooks.co.uk/ Diverse scholarly books; includes Swedish and Dutch.

http://www.harrassowitz.de/verlag/ Scholarly, especially German.

http://www.mundibooks.com/ ?

http://www.frontlist.com/ *

ASIA:

Asian: http://www.bookswindow.com/Asianbook/default.asp Chinese Japanese Korean Vietnamese

Asian: http://www.paragonbook.com/ Especially art and culture *

Chinese: http://www.hanshan.com/ Hanshan Tang Books: Chinese *

Chinese: http://www.joyo.co "Chinese Amazon"

Indian: http://www.southasiabooks.com/ *

Indian: Motilal Banarsidass. *

Singapore: http://www.selectbooks.com.sg/  Good on SE Asia. *

Indonesia: http://www.ganeshabooksbali.com/bookstore.html English interface *

Korean: http://www.hanbooks.com/ Korean

WESTERN EUROPE (+ BRAZIL):

Breton http://www.arbedkeltiek.com/bonjour.htm

Danish: http://www.saxo.dk

Dutch: http://www.thorntonsbooks.co.uk/

Esperanto: http://esperanto-usa.hypermart.net/butiko/butiko.cgi

Faroese: http://www.bokasolan.fo/

Finnish: http://www.wsoy.fi/

French: http://chapitre.com  *

German: http://www.german-book.com/  (English interface is not Safari-friendly.) *

Italian: http://www.internetbookshop.it/hme/hmepge.asp  Interface in Italian. Will use FedEx.*

Italian http://www.bancarella.it 

Norwegian: http://www.norli.no/

Portugal / Brazil: http://www.lusobraz.com/index.php3 US company *

Portugese (Brazilian): http://www.livrariacultura.com.br/scripts/cultura/index.asp

Spanish: http://www.casadellibro.com/ *

Spanish: http://www.karnobooks.com/cgi-bin/karno/ *

Swedish: http://www.thorntonsbooks.co.uk/

EASTERN EUROPE, GREECE,  AND TURKEY:

Greek: http://www.books-in-greek.gr/booksingreek/

Hungarian: http://www.hungarianbookstore.com/

Polish: http://www.polonia.com/

Romanian: http://www.raft.ro/

Russian: http://www.kniga.com *

Russian: http://www.kamkin.com/

Serbian: http://www.gerila.com/

Slovenian: http://www.emka.si/

Turkish: http://www.pandora.com.tr/

Ukrainian: http://www.geocities.com/karchadm1/

Acknowledgements:

A high proportion of the new links are from Mary. Thanks also to Angelo and several other commenters who provided links. Thanks to Adam Kotsko,  Scott Martens,  Ginger Mayerson, and Language Hat for linking to my page.

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I am emersonj at gmail dot com.

Original materials copyright John J Emerson

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