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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

#51

Post by CompleteWalker »

barbazoo wrote: post #35

Funny, that's not even my highest priority. I wish I could sort by how big or small they are, if they do anything particularly socially or ecologically responsible or something. I want to spend my money at good, human, responsible places.

Check out https://bookshop.org/ Allows you to select a local bookshop to support. The book gets shipped directly from Ingram, with some of the proceeds going to the selected store. I asked at my local bookshop if this was preferable to ordering the book with them and going to pick it up. They assured me it was, it saves them upfront costs and guarantees the sale. I still go in when I can to browse new titles, but they don't carry much tech/computer related stuff.

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

#52

Post by shnksi »

ChaitanyaSai wrote: post #50

This functionality makes a lot more sense as an extension; it saves us the hassle of visiting/bookmarking a new site. It also saves you the hassle of building good search functionality, which is quite tricky for books if you are using titles and not ISBNs. We put together an open-source version for this a while back, but it's been gathering dust ever since. https://github.com/OpsopiDev/extpricext Anyone with javascri…

Thanks for this. An extension is the next major step for this product. Your tool looks really good.

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

#55

Post by shnksi »

CompleteWalker wrote: post #51
barbazoo wrote: post #35

Funny, that's not even my highest priority. I wish I could sort by how big or small they are, if they do anything particularly socially or ecologically responsible or something. I want to spend my money at good, human, responsible places.

Check out https://bookshop.org/ Allows you to select a local bookshop to support. The book gets shipped directly from Ingram, with some of the proceeds going to the selected store. I asked at my local bookshop if this was preferable to ordering the book with them and going to pick it up. They assured me it was, it saves them upfront costs and guarantees the sale. I still go in when I can to browse new titles, but the…

Sounds like some really cool functionality, I'll take a look and see what I can implement to help people better support local bookstores

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

#57

Post by chatterhead »

Searched for Streams of Silver and got a higher priced book as a return than what was available on the site recommended. Seems that was because of the cost of shipping. Though it was only 0.01 more than what was recommended and didn't appear on the results.

Recommended: $4.58 https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=3131841312...

Found: $2.50 + $2.00 shipping https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=3119792159...

Not sure how to takes shipping into account; but really solid results so far!

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

#59

Post by shnksi »

chatterhead wrote: post #57

Searched for Streams of Silver and got a higher priced book as a return than what was available on the site recommended. Seems that was because of the cost of shipping. Though it was only 0.01 more than what was recommended and didn't appear on the results. Recommended: $4.58 https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=3131841312... Found: $2.50 + $2.00 shipping https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi…

Thank you for the feedback! I'll look into it.

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

#60

Post by shnksi »

lucasfcosta wrote: post #58

This is extremely useful. I’d just add that it’d probably be helpful to be able to add a few filters up front. I rarely buy used books or paperbacks, for example.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll work on adding these filters in should have them running before the end of the week.
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