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Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

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Re: Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

#221

Post by mattkrause »

quickthrower2 wrote: post #82
socialismisok wrote: post #64

Is "cheapest" the right objective? Because if that's the case, book piracy seems like the clear winner. But maybe we should consider "cheapest with some boundaries". For instance, we probably agree that bookstores are nice for a myriad of reasons, even if we don't frequent them. They employ people in the area, they offer curation and recommendations, they invite speakers and host events, and they help local authors g…

Clearly this is the cheapest online and legal options. It would be odd and short-lived to include illegally shared books at $0, and a site that shows physical stores would also be odd, since if you are going to a local bookshop you are probably not price sensitive. So for someone shopping online it a good objective, and may take away business from Amazon which is probably a good thing for competition. It is also usef…

I recently discovered that my local shop can sometimes order books at prices that are much better than Amazon ($80 vs. $110) and often not much slower (under a week, which is competitive with Amazon’s free shipping).

Re: Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

#222

Post by gadders »

lupire wrote: post #219
gadders wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. Enabling poor people to buy books is a far greater social good than having somewhere comfortable for hipsters to sit with their laptops and middle class mums to push their three wheeled buggies round.

Why? If you are poor you probably also have less real estate and so purchasing a non-trivial quantity of books is less convenient than borrowing. Also not sure why you blast that sexism around.

Haha. "It doesn't matter if we make buying books expensive because poor people can't afford shelf-space." Nice.

Re: Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

#223

Post by gadders »

criddell wrote: post #209
chrisseaton wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poor people should be able to buy books without having to subsidise your bookshop aesthetic.

Is that the main impact of the German law? I was thinking it might improve an author's chances of earning a reasonable amount of money from writing which I think could be a good thing. Do you know if there's any correlation between the number of bookstores in a city and the amount people in those cities read? Is it possible that more expensive but also more ubiquitous books leads to more books being read, or are pric…

>> Do you know if there's any correlation between the number of bookstores in a city and the amount people in those cities read? Is it possible that more expensive but also more ubiquitous books leads to more books being read, or are price and readership always inversely correlated?

I would say they are always inversely correlated if you are poor.

Re: Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

#224

Post by Bakary »

gverrilla wrote: post #185
NelsonMinar wrote: post #106

Shout out to https://isbn.nu/ which has been online doing book price comparison for 20+ years. It's by Glenn Fleishman, better known as an Internet journalist, and is one of the best examples I know of a simple commerce microsite.

it seems this site breaks when you search for non-English books :/ try "charles fourier", and you will get something like this: "Product Description: "Théorie des quatre mouvements et des destinées générales - Tome I" de Charles Fourier. Philosophe français, fondateur de l'École sociétaire (1772-1837)."

Don't worry, that was just the standard French spelling before the 1838 reform.

Re: Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

#225

Post by logifail »

(Sorry for sounding like a stuck record but)

This site appears to use affiliate links/cookies/Google Analytics, so is surely collecting personal data in the GDPR sense?

If so, why is there no opt-in/opt-out screen?

The whole "ask for forgiveness not permission" thing is getting pretty old, why is it still apparently OK to build a shiny thing, make it live, and then think about compliance with the law?

Re: Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

#226

Post by shnksi »

mattkrause wrote: post #221
quickthrower2 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Clearly this is the cheapest online and legal options. It would be odd and short-lived to include illegally shared books at $0, and a site that shows physical stores would also be odd, since if you are going to a local bookshop you are probably not price sensitive. So for someone shopping online it a good objective, and may take away business from Amazon which is probably a good thing for competition. It is also usef…

I recently discovered that my local shop can sometimes order books at prices that are much better than Amazon ($80 vs. $110) and often not much slower (under a week, which is competitive with Amazon’s free shipping).

That's great, do you mind if I grab the name of one of these shops so I can look into including similar shops in the tool?

Re: Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

#227

Post by criddell »

gadders wrote: post #223
criddell wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that the main impact of the German law? I was thinking it might improve an author's chances of earning a reasonable amount of money from writing which I think could be a good thing. Do you know if there's any correlation between the number of bookstores in a city and the amount people in those cities read? Is it possible that more expensive but also more ubiquitous books leads to more books being read, or are pric…

>> Do you know if there's any correlation between the number of bookstores in a city and the amount people in those cities read? Is it possible that more expensive but also more ubiquitous books leads to more books being read, or are price and readership always inversely correlated? I would say they are always inversely correlated if you are poor.

Does the German law also fix the price of used books? If not, then I could see how a thriving (but expensive) new book market could lead to a robust used market which could help readership.

Re: Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

#228

Post by Bakary »

yoyopa wrote: post #135

this should be popular. people always like to compensate others as minimally as they can.

Well... yeah? We earn money by literally trading our life-force and time for it. If we wanted to compensate the most vulnerable members of society, booksellers and authors wouldn't be the first place to look for anyway.

Re: Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

#229

Post by Bakary »

braingenious wrote: post #61

This reminds me how I wish I hadn’t loaned my friend my copy of LSD by Otto Snow a long time ago. Apparently it’s $877 on Amazon right now. I bought it for like $30 at the time.

This happens because bots dynamically change the price based on other bots, which creates feedback loops. Nobody is paying that much for a non-antique book

Re: Show HN: I built a site that finds the cheapest place to buy a book

#230

Post by wink »

MrGilbert wrote: post #174
Alex_X-PressOne wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's funny how this comment seems to have most upvotes. Good morning fellow germans ;) It adds no real feedback to the original post but shows how much we germans love our Buchpreisbindung.

Another German here. I don’t know… Buchpreisbindung sucks when it comes to eBooks. It would be awesome if you could get the eBook at a reduced price if you have the physical copy.

Isn't that 100% on the authors/publishers? Such deals exist, bundling the ebook version for technical books. Might be misremembering, but some authors (of tech books, fwiw) always were happy for that feature. But then again they usually don't live off the royalties, but are developers/consultants anyway.
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