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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

#281

Post by shnksi »

aleku wrote: post #208

This is a good project; please keep at it. I think it might benefit more people in NA compared to the rest of the world. I did a quick search for "Flask Web Development", which I purchased one week ago on Amazon for AU$56($35). But it looks like I could get a used copy from AbeBooks (a result of a search on your site) for $8, the catch, I would need to pay $35 for shipping to Australia. If I had been in the US, I cou…

I've just been working on this over the last 2-3 weeks so it's only optimized for the USA at the moment. I'm planning on have some popular regions such as UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, and India, functioning before the end of next week. Hopefully then you will find the product more useful :)

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

#282

Post by shnksi »

billfruit wrote: post #262
martopix wrote: post #248

It doesn't ask for location at all, so it should really be called "find a cheap book in the USA".

Yes, this seems a major drawback with it.

It does grab your country from your IP address, while it's currently only optimized for the US because it's brand new, I'll have support for other major regions before the end of next week.

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

#283

Post by shnksi »

weavie wrote: post #275
shnksi wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's both scraping book stores and calling APIs, I do not currently index anything and do all searches live. I'm working on building in caching and eventually indexing to make everything more efficient, but since the async live searches take roughly 4-7 seconds it's not too bad at the moment.

Interesting, thanks. I do wonder how much space it would take to cache every bookstore.

I'll let you know in a few weeks

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

#284

Post by shnksi »

DavorDK wrote: post #241

Wow, this actually works perfectly. I searched for a theme and for a not very well known local writer I know, and got decent results. Shared a tool with my book nerds immediately xD

Thanks! let me know if you have any feedback or criticisms, I'd be happy to address them for you.

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

#285

Post by shnksi »

sireat wrote: post #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.

I'm working on better optimization for other regions, depending on your region I'll have it up between 1 week and 1 month from now.

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

#286

Post by wlonkly »

cinntaile wrote: post #191
mejutoco wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can think of it as analogous to booking a flight. Do you want the cheapest flight with a 16 hour flight and 2 transfers with Ryanair? A lot of people don't mind paying a bit more for a direct flight and a complimentary chocolate (lot, swiss air), even if all are legal. Some websites even included an option to check as "worry-free" or similar to filter out these cheap options. Book equivalents could be quality of…

But surely this website is comparing the same book. There should be no difference in quality of paper or condition of the book?

It's comparing the same title (roughly, with some errors, but that's expected I think), and returning many editions. Some of those editions might be trade paperbacks, some might be mass-market on newsprint, depending on the book.

(One book I searched returned among other things an audiobook on cassette.)

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

#287

Post by lucas_membrane »

ghaff wrote: post #276
lucas_membrane wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My town library just had its annual book sale which comes from some combination of donations over the course of the year and culling its collection. Depending on the day of the sale it was $10-$20 Yes, library sales are wonderful. Random books at garage sales and library sales are very inexpensive. My question is, what happens to the books at the library sale that are unsold there? Our information age with everyone…

>My question is, what happens to the books at the library sale that are unsold there? The same thing that happens to literally tons of other paper with ink/toner on it. It gets pulped or whatever. I'm not sure how books could have a particular conduit from random item that someone really would prize to that person.

There are computers, and internet, and book sorting machines with up to 8 output bins, and nobody can afford to put together a book and a person who is willing to pay an hour's wages plus shipping and handling?

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

#289

Post by shnksi »

jakuboboza wrote: post #90

it should have probably also found ISBN numbers as when i did a search for Achtung Panzer i had all language versions and releases mixed in results. So it might be fine for books with single release but books that have multiple release and versions and on top of that pictures can be less fun to check :) Maybe You should also cache results for like a 1-3 days or something.

You can search for ISBN numbers as well as titles now, hopefully that will help :)
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