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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

#181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re conflating cheap with copyright violation, which is a bit disingenuous in an attempt I guess to guilt people for wanting to buy a cheap book. It’s fine to want a cheap book, want to support the publisher/author with a legit purchase, and not care about supporting a bookstore. Not everyone who likes books cares to keep alive the industry of physical books and bookstores.

What is "fine" is a values judgement. I would say that there's a continuum that goes from downloading an unapproved copy (worst) to buying the book at a local bookstore (best), and buying from Amazon instead sits somewhere in the middle. Somebody else might find the whole publishing industry gross, and decide the most moral choices are to either pirate the book or buy a secondhand copy.

>buy a secondhand copy

the site's cheapest appear to be exactly that. not only is secondhand the cheapest legal, but also the greenest

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

#182

I've compared a bunch of book price comparison sites, and AddAll has been consistently the best or second best. https://www.addall.com/

The great thing about addall.com is that you can specify where you are in the world and it takes into account shipping costs. For me, shipping costs for single, second hand, books are routinely more than the cost of the book so this is really useful. They then go one stage further and allow you to specify which currency you would like the costs displayed in.

Perhaps www.pagesonpages.com will add similar features in the future, it can't be a simple thing to do but I appreciate it.

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

#183

I've compared a bunch of book price comparison sites, and AddAll has been consistently the best or second best. https://www.addall.com/

The great thing about addall.com is that you can specify where you are in the world and it takes into account shipping costs. For me, shipping costs for single, second hand, books are routinely more than the cost of the book so this is really useful. They then go one stage further and allow you to specify which currency you would like the costs displayed in. Perhaps www.pagesonpages.com will add similar features in t…

its on the way I promise - depending on your region I'll have it running between 1 week and 1 month from now.

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

#184
Nice work!

Works better than expected in Europe. That's a compliment!

Many price comparison sites will show seemingly cheap books.

However once you add in VAT and shipping they become quite expensive.

After Brexit, Amazon(especially amazon.co.uk) became expensive to buy English language books for mainland Europe.

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

#185

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)."

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

#186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Libraries allow (not only) poor people to read as much books as they want for free or ~the price of a cheap book. That seems to be a much better mechanism to allow for literacy independent of income than trying to make books cheaper.

Why shouldn’t they get to own books like you can, without paying above market prices so middle-class people can have nice spaces?

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

#187

As a German I don't have to worry too much about the prices of books. We have Buchpreisbindung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchpreisbindung

We have the same thing in France too.

As well as Greece, Italy, South Korea, Mexico, and a couple others: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Countries-with-a-Fix...

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

#188
I have a question. How do you get the catalogue of books? Have you had to scrape a whole bunch of book stores, or do you make a ton of api calls? Do you store all the catalogues on your server, or are you calling a search on each of these sites live?

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

#189

Trying to make sense of this website, today I learned that Canada and the USA for example have no FBP (fixed book price) laws/agreements apparently. The more you know ...

I was confused for a second too. It seems that fixed book price is more the exception than the rule. I just took it for granted. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price

The entry in that table for Norway seems likely outdated, maybe someone here from Norway can update it?

> Law binding to all book sellers proposed in 2013, but unsure whether next parliament will repeal proposal before it takes effect.

I assume there's been a meeting of parliament since 2013

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

#190

As a German I don't have to worry too much about the prices of books. We have Buchpreisbindung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchpreisbindung

Same in The Netherlands: https://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0017452/2021-07-01/0
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