Can one avoid Amazon ?

I buy a lot through Amazon, for the simple reason that the books I am looking for are rarely available at my usual bookshops. I can of course order the books through these bookshops but they themselves just pass the order to Amazon.

Any suggestions ?

I recently found out that Amazon owns 40% of librarything. Submit; you can't win.

It is like this :

Tim Spalding (majority)
AbeBooks
CIG

Problem is : Amazon has taken over AbeBooks

I visit our local bookshop (Waterstones) most weeks - often with a wishlist in my hand. But if a book doesn't appear on the shelves in a few weeks and I've decided I really want it then I go to Amazon. For many books they're cheaper and usually their service is quicker and more efficient. Why should I feel guilty - I support local shops but if they're incapable of providing the goods then I go elsewhere. Ditto Jessops for photographic supplies - they went to the wall not long ago and have been partly reincarnated on a smaller scale. They just didn't provide shoppers with what they wanted.

I've stopped reading.

Mac, you're in Europe, you should have other options. Check out deastore.com--it's Italian, but it sells Eng, Ger, Fra, and Spa books as well. No shipping charges.

I hope they live and prosper.

For used books, see how you like Marelibri. Also, you can contact book sellers on Abe and arrange for a sale off the site, if they are willing (I've never had a no, and every time they gave me a discount too).

Tomfolio.com is excellent for antiquarian books, had nothing but good experience with them. It's an association of booksellers, not a centralised company, so you have to deal separately with them too.

Also, you can contact book buyers on Abe and arrange for a sale off the site, if they are willing

!!!Of course! Oh frabjous day! Thanks for this Easter miracle, Lola.

This is what i call usefull info
Txs Lola

You are welcome--feel like I should point out that if you're arranging an independent sale, you won't have Abe's protection in case of missing book etc. However, I've done this more than a couple dozen times with beautiful results, I just choose booksellers with excellent feedback. (If they have a store, all the better.)

Just saved 30 euro ! Wohooooooooo

Wow, you're fast.

First edition of norman lewis sea sand and stars !

#1, I don't know where you're located but I don't know of any independent bookstore that passes along its special order to Amazon. Try Powells.com or Strandbooks.com for independent mail order alternatives to Amazon.

Wow, the strand is something !

boekwinkeltjes.nl: bunch of small and bigger sellers, may yield surprising results (also price-wise).

www.antiqbook.com: more specialized and therefore usually more expensive, but may turn out to be very useful at times.

all else fails, abbie hoffman had some good ideas

The people you know !

No need to steal, just go for the crappiest condition volume on half.com.

I love Amazon. They have all sorts of oddities and rarities to me that no bookstore would ever bother to carry.

I hate Amazon. They are a monopolist that drives Indies under and makes it harder to find a nice store to browse.

I love Amazon. They deliver promptly and give great service.

I hate Amazon. They constantly push utter crap and encourage mass marketing of absolutely everything. No, for the 527th time, I do not also want to buy a Dan Brown book.

I love Amazon. When I can't wait for a book they wirelessly deliver to the kindle app on my phone.

My biggest alternatives to Amazon are academic publishers, direct ordering from specialists, like China Books, or E-Bay. There was a while when the aaba.org site could compete with Abebooks, but those days are gone - it is now a subset of abebooks. Project Gutenberg is also useful.

I am fortunate to live in the city that has Powells as well as other independent bookstores. Powells has almost everything. It is not always very cheap but I don't mind paying more for a book if I am encouraging a company like that. So I have been avoiding Amazon and usually don't use it. Sometimes, once in a great while, they are the only place I can find that has a title I really want. But in general I avoid them because of the "hate" reasons listed in #19.

I am kind of upset they bought Goodreads and already own part of LT. I hope LT survives for a good long time because it has greatly enriched both my reading/intellectual life and my social life.

19 Yes Amusing, you summarize our feelings well.
Anna, your lucky you have serious bookshops close to you

Tim is digging the trenches, North Korean, I mean Goodread refugees are coming over, or so I am said ; )

Perhaps we should let them know that Le Salon willing to interview for new members. Once they submit the application. And pay the requisite fees.

fees paid to the Salon, I understand you well.

Can we ask for a fee in chocolate? And divide it among existing members?

herring please!

not sure I could live without Amazon, having no access to English bookshops and they are so efficient.

I like my chocolate hot, thick, and with a bit of scotch in it. Too much to ask?

Yes, Amazon is indispensible, love it and hate it. They got an order from me yesterday, as I learned a friend was beginning Chinese and wanted to send him the Yip book on poetry. 20 years ago, doing so would have been an endeavor. Now, search for the book and then - one click!

I miss the endeavour

Amusing, i think you are more a whiskey - fudge bloke

I miss walking into a bookshop and looking at the staff selection, and then walking out with a bag full of books. But really, how many bookshops offer a good staff selection? I can only remember one, and that one is now a 45 minute metro ride away. There is an OK bookstore near me now, but not as good in terms of staff selection, and anyway they couldn't beat the recommendations I get here.

It took me several years to adapt to buying books online. At one point I looked back and realized that I had been reading the same kind of books over and over: the ones Amazon suggested to me based on the books I had bought from them before. That's when I started really using LT to get good recommendations, based on people's comments and not on robots telling me "you might like this".

But really if I look back some more, I had let myself be steered to OK, easy to read and easy to sell books for years, and it started with brick-and-mortar bookstores. Amazon just industrialized the biased recommendation process and made it worse.

Marelibri took me to biblio.com where I found a book in the U.S. from an independent bookseller that I had not been able to find before. Thanks, Lola!

Visiting college towns over the last year as my daughter did her college visits was great. They still have good bookstores.

I also go to SF about twice a year, and City Lights is still what it ever was. Thanks, Larry.

But there is no longer a good bookstore near my office or home, and a few short years ago there were multiples, and that's Amazon.

Good bookstores today are destinations, not spur-of-the-moment whims.

Where's that whiskey fudge?

Bon, finally I finished a review. It has been months !

http://www.librarything.com/work/140311/reviews/77927091

Cool connection, Lisa!

nice, mac

Very nice. I have to read the review again a couple times - there is much there. Then it sounds like my reading list has just expanded again.

Txs Rick

I would die without Amazon. THey usually have the books I want, are 100% reliable in terms of shipping to Taiwan, which can be a nightmare ('Taiwan? That's Bangkok, right?') and it all works out at around the same price as English language books in the shops here. Other online booksellers won't ship here, so I have to use amazon.

but, I hate them as well. Why do these companies have to be so fucking greedy? how much money does Beeezos actually need?

Brick and mortar bookshops in the UK are appalling, last time I visited: tables and tables of trashy chicklit and illiterate 9 year olds as service staff. THere are lots of really good books being published by small independent publishers: Dedalus, Tuttle, NDP, etc but you can never find them in a bookstore. Anyway, I haven't got the time or energy for an extended rant, but you get the picture.

Bookstores in Taipei are generally very good, but slow to order new releases.

Brillant !

Aw rats, I'm just going to have to spend more time speaking Ainu, Lakota or Tagalog at one of those Indie establishments...

39: That was great. I just wish it sounded less plausible.