Celebrity Endorsement #2

I rarely give plugs to commercial products or services here on my site.  In fact, I can remember doing so only once before, almost three years ago. But I just have to share something with you that makes me smile every time I think about it... knowing that I have such a valuable service available to me anytime I may want it.

You see, I have a love-hate relationship with bookstores.  I love browsing bookstores... but I hate plunking down the king's ransom full retail price for new books.

When I was attending Hebrew University back in the mid 80s, one of my favorite hang-outs was a used bookstore in Jerusalem called 'Sefer V'Sefel' (Book & Mug), that doubled as a coffee shop.  They even offered a nice selection of their own home-made ice cream! 

I loved that I could go in there and sit around and read for as long as I wanted... and then walk out with more used books than I could carry for less than the cost of one new book in one of the big retail chains. 

And once I'd finished reading what I'd bought, S&S would buy them back for only slightly less than I paid.

Of course, the downside to such an arrangement is that the limited size of any such bookstore makes it unlikely that you'd find exactly what you're looking for on any given visit... or if you happened to luck out, that the book would be in good shape.

However, with the exception of a few college towns, the days of the used bookstore are pretty much gone.  The profit margin on used books is apparently so minuscule that finding a store like Sefer V'Sefel these days is a truly rare thing.  In fact, I had started to think that most of the used books in the world were now located in old milk crates and cardboard boxes at flea markets.  But not long ago a friend tipped me off to an on-line company that has simply blown my mind.  It's called Abebooks.com and their mission statement kinda sums things up nicely:

"...to help people find and buy any book from any bookseller anywhere"

And you can take them at their word!  They are a portal through which you can search for over a hundred million new and used books located at more than 13,500 bookstores worldwide.

Let's say you are looking for a used copy of Nevil Shute's post-apocalyptic novel, 'On the beach'.  You could...

a) ... drive down and waste your only free afternoon trying your luck at that charming little used bookstore/jumble shop run by those two rather, um, earthy-looking women who smell vaguely like tofu and seem to have more body hair than your uncle Bob...

~or~

b) ... simply log onto Abebooks.com and search for what you need by title, author or one of several other criteria.  Within seconds you will be looking at a list of pretty much every used copy of the book available for sale in the world.  Not only that, but you can compare prices and book condition, as well as the most convenient bookseller location to where you live. Then... once you've settled on a book, you can buy it right there from within Abebook's site.  They deal with sending the instructions and payment to whichever bookseller you selected.

Heck, in the end you might actually end up buying your copy of Shute's book from the tofu-smelling, leg-hair-wearing gals down at the 'Bean Curd & Books' outlet via Abebook's seamless portal.  But then again, you might find that a bookseller across town... or on the other side of the world... has a better price or a copy in better condition.

Not only that, but this site is an excellent place to locate those used textbooks you need for a fraction of the price you would have to pay at the campus bookstore.

Don't thank me... I'm a giver.