Postage Prices
I just received an email from AbeBooks suggesting some books I should read, based apparently on the titles I had already purchased. It was an interesting list, to me at least, because it was created from the types of titles I had purchased from them before.
From the list of books I picked one, which is omitted from the screenshot above. I want you to focus on the costs, rather than my choice of books. You can see that the books costs about $12 US and AbeBooks provides a useful currency converter which reveals that I will have to pay about $16.50 in Canadian currency.
If you are ordering books from AbeBooks, you should pay some attention to the shipping costs before you put them in the cart. In this case, it will cost me $100 US (about $140 CDN) to buy a used book which costs about $15 bucks. The book, by the way, is a used and small one, not for the coffee table, but it would have to travel all the way from Texas to Ontario. This has happened before and I have often spotted a cheap book that was too expensive to ship.
This is not the fault of AbeBooks and I did find other copies of the same book from other places with much cheaper shipping prices and AbeBooks should not be blamed for the weakness of our currency. Just make sure to check before you check out.
Post Script:
AbeBooks is not named for an "Abe", but because it began as Advanced Book Exchange in Victoria and still has a head office there, even though it is now owned by Amazon where things are often shipped very cheaply.
Canadians should know that one can order from Canadian bookshops on AbeBooks to avoid the currency problem, although the shipping costs still are often hefty. Some sellers also offer free shipping to Canada, but in both cases the inventory will be much smaller.
AbeBooks is invaluable, however, as a global 'bookstore' which provides access to local bookshops. You can, for example, find and search for books at Cardinal Books in Birr, just outside of London and then go and pick them up without spending on shipping.
AbeBooks is invaluable, however, as a global 'bookstore' which provides access to local bookshops. You can, for example, find and search for books at Cardinal Books in Birr, just outside of London and then go and pick them up without spending on shipping.
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