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Buying Books
on the Internet
(especially foreign language
books)
I buy a lot of foreign-language,
out-of-print, and specialized scholarly books, and the internet has been
a real godsend to me. Awhile back I posted my own internet sources (and
solicited new sources)
here. This page is a summary of my results.
New suggestions are still
welcome, and I will update this page from time to time.
Rightly or wrongly, I still
think that shipping from Europe is slower and more expensive than it
should be.
Sources I've used, and recommend
I do my first search on
Bookfinder.com, which
is good for books in English, French,
German, and Italian. Once I’ve pulled up a list on Bookfinder, I look for
the
ABE listings. ABE is a sort of consortium
of small booksellers, and I've never had bad luck with them.
Bookfinder has informed me that
they are working on Spanish. Wonderful! Apparently part of the problem is
that the Spanish market is terribly fragmented by nations. My guess is
that the globalist collapse of the Argentine economy was also a factor.
Elibron publishes cheap reprints of a very large selection of old
public-domain books in English, French, and other languages. They seem to
be moving toward e-books, but the hard-copy books I've bought from them
were very nicely done..
Labyrinth Sale annex has a great selection of remaindered
academic books, and they also send out a useful catalog.
Scholar's Bookshelf also publishes academic remainders, and publishes
good catalogs.
Edward R Hamilton sells more random remainders with a hodgepodge
catalog, but they can be very cheap.
Harrassowitz has an enormous list of scholarly books in
several languages. Many specialized catalogs.
For Chinese
books and books about China I go to Phenix
/ Sinobiblia in France. They have a great selection and send out a
very helpful catalog, and customer service is great. (They also cover
Japan, Korea, Tibet, Central Asia, and SE Asia). Shipping is
expensive, but not too slow -- though they do seem to send it by a
very, very slow, still pretty expensive method unless you specifically ask them. East Wind Books
(no link, 1435 A Stockton, San Francisco) is also great, but they
aren’t on the internet and are only so-so for mail order.
For French books I
go first to
Amazon Canada since shipping will be faster if they have it in stock.
I've also used Amazon France.
FNAC is has a good list of Portuguese books and my one experience with
them was good, but also slow -- I've just been told it's mostly a French
company and good for French
books too.
Lettres Gothiques (Livre de Poche) has cheap, well-done
popular editions of Old French literature, often with Modern French
translations.
Oriental Culture
Enterprises (13-17 Elizabeth St., NYC) has been recommended for Chinese
books, though they’re not on the internet. UPDATE (Dec. 05): I've
shopped there and I can highly recommend the place.
I've bought from
Thornton's books.
They have a good list of titles, but their customer
service wasn't very good at all.
And while
Powells
isn't really an internet source for me since I live in Portland, it deserves
listing.
*****
Sources recommended by
others
*NEW*
Buscar libros Books in
Spanish. A few spot checks tells me that this site is a very good one.
*NEW*
www.dangdang.com:
Chinese books; accepts Paypal.
*NEW*
www.books.com.tw:
Chinese books from Taiwan.
Searches:
Add all Portal.
Seek Books Australian Portal.
Fetch Book Portal.
Booksold Portal
of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers.
ABE France French Books
ABE Germany German
Books
Book Sense
Searches 800 independent booksellers
Booksellers:
Frontlist Enormous selection of scholarly books, apparently all in
English.
Seminary Co-op
Academic bookstores
Schoenhof's Cambridge, MA: scholarly foreign language books.
In England
Grant and Cutler
sells books from many
languages, though I’ve never used them and British shipping always seems
slow.
Paragon Asian art and culture. Han
Shan Hanshan Tang Books: Chinese, mostly art.
Zvab Hard-to-find antiquarian books. German site, but seems to cover
English and French.
German-book.com. German books. (English interface
-- not Safari-friendly.)
Chapitre French books.
Galaxidion: Hard-to-find antiquarian books in French.
Many
sources, mostly
French from Dennis Deschene (on the left side of page).
Lusobraz Portuguese language, including Brazil. US company, ships
from US.
Internet bookshop Italian books, interface in Italian. Will
use FedEx.
Buscar
libros Books in Spanish
Kamo Books Spanish books from the Americas; California location.
El Corte Ingles Spanish books (Spain).
Kniga Russian books.
Select Books Singapore. Good on SE Asia.
Ganesha Books Bali Indonesia, English interface.
Motilal Banarsidass.
India.
South Asia Books Also from India. (There are many cheap Indian
reprints of books on Buddhism, Hinduism, and Orientalism.)
Here
is a list of Chinese booksellers in the US.
OTHER SOURCES
FYI. These sources are worth a try, but
haven't been as thoroughly checked.
Mundi Books Books in many languages, but the selection looks thin.
Best web buys A search, like Bookfinder, but doesn't seem to list ABE.
Books Window Chinese Japanese
Korean Vietnamese.
Joyo "Chinese Amazon".
Han Books Korean.
Arbed keltiek Breton.
Saxo Danish.
Thornton's Books Dutch.
Esperanto-usa Esperanto.
Bokasolan Faroese.
Wsoy Finnish.
Bancarella Italian.
Norli. Norwegian.
Livraria Cultura Brazilian Portugese.
Casa del libro Spanish.
Thornton's books Swedish.
Books-in-Greek Greek .
Hungarian bookstore Hungarian.
Polonia.com Polish.
Raft Romanian. Librarie.net
Romanian (English-language:
www.books-zone.com)
Kamkin Russian (English interface).
Gerila Serbian.
Emka Slovenian.
Pandora Turkish.
Karchad Ukranian.
Acknowledgements:
A high proportion of the new links are from
Mary. Thanks also to
Angelo, Dennis Des
Chene and several other commenters who provided links. Thanks to
Adam Kotsko,
Scott
Martens, Ginger
Mayerson, and Language Hat
for linking to my page.
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I am emersonj at gmail dot com.
Original materials copyright John J
Emerson
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