Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: a Pattern Language (and other books )

[Robert Schrader (rms]

At 08:41 PM 4/20/01 -0400, HeidiNYS [at] aol.com wrote:
> Dear Co- conspirators,
>
> We too used A Pattern Language in thinking about building Cantine's Island
> [Saugerties, NY].
>
> We were able to motivate a couple of Libraries in our system to buy a copy.
>
> And my husband has turned me on to several websites for used books.  As I
> understand it, when Amazon started selling used books, a number of used
> bookstore owners decided to throw in the towel.

Fortunately this is not quite true.   By providing another connection 
between used
booksellers and buyers, Amazon has actually improved it for us used 
booksellers.

> Others got together and formed a cooperative used book site.  I know our
> local used books stores participate.  It's neat as I deal with the individual
> shop which has the book I want, but can access this info readily thru there
> shared database [is this coming across with clarity??].
> So I was just able to buy a hardcover copy of a Stewart Edward White book
> [anyone into the Betty Books???] and have it shipped to my off-the-grid
> friend who'd lost her copy.  the book cost me $6.  A great deal.  Plus a few
> bucks shipping.
>
> Here are a couple: ABEbooks.com & Alibris.com.

Alibris is a different business model than other used book sites.  Most 
used book
sites just charge a listing fee, and connect the buyer with the 
seller.  Alibris spends
far more money on advertising than the other used book sites, and presents
themselves as the owner of the book.  When you order a book, they buy it from
the used book dealer, and then sell it to you, after tacking on 
approximately 20%.
( Actually, to be fair to them, they do have a small inventory, but most of 
what
they advertise is not theirs. )  The point is: you can often get it cheaper 
at another
site.

The following is a listing of all of the major, and most of the minor used 
book sites:
Advanced Book Exchange(abebooks.com),  Antiqbook.com, Biblion.com, Alibris.com,
BookAvenue.com,JustBooks.com, Powells.com, TomFolio.com,  Bibliofind.com,
Amazon's marketplace and zshops.

If you don't want to search them one-by-one, you can try the meta-search sites:
bookfinder.com, and addall.com are the two most comprehensive.   The are 
faster,
but sometimes suffer from a one-size-fits-all problem on complex searches. 
( Of the
two, I prefer bookfinder because their error messages are more accurate. )

In summary: use bookfinder.  If you don't find it listed there, scroll to 
the bottom of
their page and click on the links.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Schrader
Fifth Avenue Books
3838 Fifth Avenue
San Diego, Ca, 92103

www.5thavenuebooks.com
619-291-4660

All original material copyright Robert Schrader



_______________________________________________
Cohousing-L mailing list
Cohousing-L [at] cohousing.org  Unsubscribe info:
http://www.communityforum.net/mailman/listinfo/cohousing-l