I need to buy a book that is out of print

By Anneli Meeder - April 27, 2005

Finding a book that is no longer available in the bookstores used to be very difficult, but today, the majority of bookstores list their stock online - new books as well as used or antiquarian books. Finding a book these days is mostly a question of using the right online search tool.

New books websites

Arguably the best-known of all Ecommerce sites on the Internet is Amazon.com. Amazon sells used books now as well as new books, but so far their emphasis is on books that were published since 1970. It is possible, though less likely, to find older books here. The used books are usually offered by independent bookstores or private persons in association with Amazon.

These websites all offer new as well as used books:

• Amazon
• Amazon.co.uk (in the U.K.)
• Amazon.ca (in Canada)
• Barnesandnoble.com (in the U.S.)
• Chapters.ca (in Canada)

Used book websites

Several websites are dedicated to selling used books by combining the stocks of thousands of bookstores. The largest of these is Abebooks.com, with a total inventory of 70 million individual books for sale by 13,000 booksellers around the world. If a book cannot be found at any of the following, it is indeed a rare book.

• www.abebooks.com (70 Mio books)
• www.alibris.com (50 Mio books)
• www.biblio.com (17 Mio books)

Book sites search engines

For comparison shopping, the following websites are very useful. They simultaneously search through several online bookstores (such as Amazon, Alibris, Abebooks and many more) and sort the available books by lowest price:

• www.addall.com (new books)
• used.addall.com (used books)
• www.bookfinder.com (new and used books)

Non-book sites

The auction site ebay lists many books for auction, but rare books may take a long time to come up. It is usually possible to buy used books for less than at the book sites, so if you have time to wait for the desired book to come up, your patience may be rewarded.

• www.ebay.com

The shopping search engine Froogle may be able to find books that are for sale on an individual bookseller's or on a publisher's website. It is advised to knock on wood first before trusting your luck to Froogle - every time I have used Froogle to find a book, I have only found "ghost" copies; i.e. books that used to be for sale, but that have been sold to somebody else in the meantime.

• froogle.google.com

If you are still unable to find the book, consider the following options:

Contact the publisher
Some books, especially if they are very technical in nature, or conference proceedings, will only be sold through the publisher, but not through Amazon or any of the other new book sites (they may eventually turn up at the used book sites). If you suspect that this may be the case, then contacting the publisher directly might solve your problem.

• Publishers' websites on LinksMine

Put in a request/want
Most if of the book websites above allow you to add a "request" or a "want" - you enter the details of the book you are looking for into their database, and when this book turns up, you will be notified by email.