Where to Find Books
Don't limit yourself to the big two when shopping for books online. Choose from independent stores that will let you know about unusual titles not easily found elsewhere
This page:
Meta Sites for Bookstores |
Book Search Engines |
New Books |
Used and Rare Books |
Publishers |
E-Texts, E-books
Meta Sites for Bookstores
- Bookstore Hall of Fame - My personal list
of great bookstores
- IndieBound - An association of independent bookstores; find one near you (formerly BookSense)
- Publishers Marketplace: Bookstore Search - Enter a place and get a map showing bookstores — chain, independent, and specialty — in the area
- Bookstores Around the World - Annotated lists from the rec.arts.books FAQ
- Booksellers - Member directory from the American Booksellers Association
- Bookwire Index: Booksellers - A meta list of bookstore lists
- New Pages Guide to Independent Bookstores
- Selected Bookstores (Publishers WWW Virtual Library)
- Northern California Independent Booksellers Association
- San Francisco Bay Area Bookstore Events
California:
Book Search Engines (new, used, & rare books)
See also
- Book Content Search Engines if you're interested in searching the text of books
- AddAll
- Advanced Book Exchange (abebooks.com) - Used and rare
- Alibris
- Bibliofind - Now combined with Amazon
- Bibliology - Searches hundreds of dealers' stock. No surcharges from Biblology
- Biblion - With 3 million titles, it's Britain's largest Web site for rare, antiquarian, and secondhand books
- BookFinder.com - Searches some of the other sites listed here (formerly MX Bookfinder)
- FetchBook
- ISBN.nu - Searches across several online vendors' sites
- World Book Dealers - International booksellers, emphasis on rare books
Search for books to buy These sites search many online bookstores' inventories all at once. Some of them let you compare prices. These are the places to start looking when you must have an out-of-print book (or even a new one). But beware: some of these sites force you to buy a book from them — rather than directly from the bookstore — and charge you a markup in the process
New Books
- Bas Bleu - Books for modern-day bluestockings
- Blackwell's - An awe-inspiring bookstore in Oxford, England; shop online if you're not lucky enough to get there.
- China Books and Periodicals - The source for all things Chinese
- City Lights Booksellers and Publishers - Legendary San Francisco bookstore, the original home of the Beats
- Common Reader - A catalog with unjustly neglected gems of the past and the best of new books
- Daedalus Books - Another interesting catalog
- Elliott Bay Book Company - A wonderful bookstore in Seattle
- Internet Book Shop - Claims to be the Europe's largest online bookstore (bookshop.co.uk)
- Kepler's Books & Magazines, Menlo Park
- Labyrinth Books - Scholarly and university press books at great prices
- Midnight Special Bookstore, Santa Monica - Specializing in political books
- Natural History Book Service, Ltd, Totnes, Devon, England
- Powells - An amazing bookstore in Portland, Oregon, now online. Also, Powells Technical Books.
(What's this?) - Scholar's Bookshelf - Discounted books, mostly from academic presses
- Tattered Cover, Denver - One of America's great independent bookstores
- University Book Store - Serving the University of Washington and the Seattle community
- University Press Books, Berkeley - Specializing in books from university presses
I think everyone already knows about Nile.com and Farms & Ovals. But I think you should support your local independent bookstores as much as possible. Some of the sites above will help you find one. If you don't have a local independent, buy online from an independent bookstore in another city, like Powells or one of the others listed below. If we don't support these stores, they cannot continue to exist
Used and Rare Books
See also
- Book Search Engines, above
- Antiquarian Book Shops and Associations
- Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA Booknet)
- Avenue Victor Hugo - Formerly a great used bookstore in Boston; now online only
- Kaiser Books and Computers Used Book Store White Pages
- Moe's Books presents Virtual Moe's - The online version of a cool store in Berkeley
- Powells - The huge bookstore in Portland (new and used books)
- BookMooch
- PaperBackSwap - Not just paperbacks
- BookCrossing - Not the usual trade site, BookCrossing is for people who like to leave books to be found by others. The finders then report in, and so on
Book Exchanges:
Trade in your used books for other ones
Publishers
See also
- Algonquin Books
- American Association of University Presses
- Cambridge University Press
- Chronicle Books
- Coffee House Press
- Copper Canyon Press - "A nonprofit publisher devoted to poetry"
- Dorling Kindersley - Great illustrated works for adults as well as children
- Dover Publications - Classic reprints and clip art
- Faber and Faber
- Facts on File
- Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Graywolf Press
- Grove/Atlantic - Grove Press has published some great works of modern and subversive literature
- Houghton Mifflin - Publishers of the American Heritage Dictionary, Riverside Shakespeare, textbooks, and much more
- Knopf
- New Directions Publishing
- The New Press - A nonprofit publisher that puts out many books the mainstream won't touch
Some of my favorite publishers
NPP was a great publisher of belles lettres, nature essays, Eastern religion, and Californiana in the 1980s. Its reincarnation as an imprint of a major publisher just wasn't the same
North Point Press:
- Penguin Books USA
- Penguin Classics (Penguin UK)
Penguin Books:
- Prometheus Books - Works of philosophy and skepticism
- University of California Press - Many titles available in E-editions
- White Pine Press - "From the classic writers of Asia to contemporary voices from around the world"
- Workman Publishing
- AcqWeb's Directory of Publishers and Vendors
- New Pages: Independent Publishers and University Presses
- WWW Virtual Library: Publishers
Web Directories of Publishers:
E-Texts, E-Books
- The Online Books Page - Free e-Texts from all over the 'Net. Available by Library of Congress classification (John Ockerbloom, U. Penn.)
- Book Aligner - "Find matching books for a given HathiTrust, Internet Archive, or Google Books URL"
- Digital Book Index - Indexes the major e-text sites — most, but not all of them, offering free texts
- E-Books on the Web - Search multiple indexes at once (U. of Buffalo)
- Internet Public Library: Online Texts
- Open Culture: Free E-Books - Great books available in various formats
- Internet Archive: Text Archives - Scanned books from major libraries
- Project Gutenberg - Large site for free, out-of-copyright e-texts.
- Open Library - E-books available for borrowing and reading online
- Alex Catalogue of Electronic Texts
- Bartleby.com - Reference books and classics
- Books-On-Line
- Chest of Books - Full text of out-of-copyright books, many of them eccentric books from the 19th century
- Directory of Open Access Books (DOAB) - "Aacademic, peer reviewed books in open access"
- Early English Books Online (EEBO) - Project to transcribe English books published between 1475 and 1700. Some texts are free to all; others are available to libraries by subscription.
- Humanistic Texts - Great works of religion, philosophy, literature, and history "develop[ing] an understanding of what it is to be human"
- Humanities Text Initiative (University of Michigan)
- The Internet Classics Archive - Greco-Roman classics, plus some Chinese and Persian literature
- Literature Network - Full text of some of the Great Books [online-literature.com]
- National Academies Press - Thousands of reports — from the National Academy of Sciences and other agencies — available online, free
- Online Medieval and Classical Literature - Collected texts
- Oxford Text Archive - Classic works of literature and linguistic corpora
- Perseus Digital Library - Greek, Roman, Arabic, Germanic, Early Modern English, and 19th Century American Literature
- Universal Library (a.k.a. Million Books Project) - Mostly out-of-copyright books, many in Chinese and Indian languages
- University of Adelaide Library E-Books - Readable HTML files
- University of California Press e-books - Some are free to all users, some are free to UC people only, some are for sale
- University of Virginia Electronic Text Archive (now integrated into the library catalog)
- Wikisource - Project to provide "source texts" (classic works of literature, political documents) in various languages, from the people who brought us Wikipedia
- Wiretap Electronic Text Archives (formerly wiretap.spies.com)
- World eBook Library - Claims to have the largest free e-book collection
- Online Books Page: Archives and Indexes
- Open Library - E-books available for borrowing and reading online
- Overdrive - Find libraries that loan Overdrive e-books. Note: If your library isn't listed here, it doesn't mean they don't have e-books, just that they don't have Overdrive e-books. Check with your library for information. (Ebooklocator.com re-directs here.)
- Amazon: Kindle e-books - Read them with the Kindle device or using the Kindle app on other devices
- Apple iTunes: Books
- Google Play: Books
- Kobo books - Read them with the Kobo reader or on other devices
- Amazon - Many books in its catalog are searchable. Look for the "Search Inside this Book" graphic
- Google Book Search - Search the full text of books Google has scanned (either from publishers or research libraries). (Note: copyright laws and ongoing litigation will determine how much of a book is displayed at one time.)
- Hathi Trust - Repository of scanned books from major university libraries. Searchable by book titles or full text. Texts out of copyright are available to all; all content is available to the universities' students and faculty
- Open Library - Allows searching of the text of books in its database
- Internet Archive: Audio Archive - Audio books, interviews, sermons, music, radio programs
- LibriVox - Free public domain audio books read by volunteers
- Project Gutenberg Audio eBooks
- Podiobooks
- Full Text Reports - Reports from government agencies, non-profits, think tanks, etc. as discovered by librarians Gary Price and Shirl Kennedy (No longer updated. See Price's LJ InfoDocket)
- Gray Literature - California State University Long Beach library LibGuide
- Gray Literature - Cornell University Library LibGuide
- Grey Literature - University of Michigan Library research guide
- Grey Literature Report - No longer updated after 2016 (New York Academy of Medicine)
- GreyNet International
- GreySource International - "A selection of web-based resources in grey literature
- International Directory: Organizations in Grey Literature
- OpenGrey - System for Information on Grey Literature in Europe
- Policy Commons - "Publications from thousands of IGOs, NGOs, research centers and think tanks"
Most of these e-texts are available free
Indexes:
These sites will help you find particular book titles in electronic form (if available)
Collections of E-books:
See also
Web Directory of Online Books Archives and Indexes:
E-books to Borrow:
E-books for Sale:
Book Content Search Engines:
Search the contents of books
Audio E-books:
Grey Literature:
See also
International Standard Booksellers Number (ISBN)
- ISBN.org - Official source for ISBNs in the U.S
- ISBN-13 Online Converter - Convert 10-digit ISBNs to 13-digits ones, and vice versa
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