14 ms·

Is "cheapest" the right objective? Because if that's the case, book piracy seems like the clear winner. But maybe we should consider "cheapest with some bounda

Is "cheapest" the right objective? Because if that's the case, book piracy seems like the clear winner. But maybe we should consider "cheapest with some boundaries". For instance, we probably agree that bookstores are nice for a myriad of reasons, even if we don't frequent them. They employ people in the area, they offer curation and recommendations, they invite speakers and host events, and they help local authors get started. They may offer benefits or profit sharing. But a physical space like that costs money. Experience costs money. Curation costs money (indirectly). I'd argue that cheapest as a metric undercuts best as a metric. Cheap is one important input to the purchasing decision, but it shouldn't be the only one. We have to learn to accept some inefficiencies and some personal inconveniences for the sake of a healthier social ecosystem.

kennyloginz 4y ago
I think you might be confusing peoples desires of a physical book, vs bookstore?
- socialismisok 4y ago
  I want a book, I can choose to buy from a local shop or Amazon or print on demand shop selling a pirated copy. Those options are listed most expensive to cheapest. But a portion of the the sale goes to that business, who in turn passes it on to various places. The local bookshop uses the money to keep an asset in my local community and employs people in my local community. Amazon ships from a warehouse, and provides no local amenity. But they might employ someone locally. Maybe. The print on demand shop is giving me a counterfeit product, but it's the cheapest. It provides no local benefit. So I'm not confusing book for bookstore. I'm specifically saying that the second order effects of seeking the cheapest copy of a book have implications beyond the sale of the book itself.
  - kortilla 4y ago
    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.
    - bee_rider 4y ago
      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.
      - 867-5309 4y ago
        >buy a secondhand copy the site's cheapest appear to be exactly that. not only is secondhand the cheapest legal, but also the greenest
      - kortilla 4y ago
        >would say that there's a continuum that goes from downloading an unapproved copy (worst) to buying the book at a local bookstore (best), Because you’re still fixated on bookstores, which tons of people don’t give a shit about. You’re incorrectly putting stuff on a one-dimensional continuum. >or buy a secondhand copy. Being a secondary market participant supports a market. If you don’t want to support publishers, it must be pirated.
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      I'm not trying to guilt anyone. Some folks need to optimize for cheap. What I'm trying to say is that cheap might not be the best general metric, and laying out reasoning behind that. I try to avoid saying that someone is bad for choosing cheap, and if I did earlier, I apologize. The goal is to say, "here are some conditions to consider when making a decision".
  - lupire 4y ago
    Print on demand is more expensive than Amazon for all but expensive technical books.
shnksi 4y ago
Thanks for your comment, all of that is certainly true. I'm thinking through a solution that would likely come in the form of certain filters on the site. I'd try to get your region as accurately as possible or ask for input, and then serve you local bookstores in your area that have their catalogues online. Something like this would help promote local stores and help you differentiate between your local bookstores. It's not something I've started building yet but what do you think of it?
- socialismisok 4y ago
  I like it, but most of my local shops don't have their inventory or prices online, sadly.
  - shnksi 4y ago
    Hmm that does make it difficult. Perhaps a solution that allows local bookstores to put their catalogues online easily, this data then feeds straight into the search product. It would be difficult and manual to make happen but it could be extremely useful.
    - socialismisok 4y ago
      This feels like a roundabout way to getting bookshop.org, which might not be the cheapest, but is simple to use as a consumer.
    - auggierose 4y ago
      Not sure why local bookstores would like to participate in a race to the bottom, though.
      - TuringTest 4y ago
        Probably because Amazon is already competing with them, and they at least get some independent sales.
    - TuringTest 4y ago
knutwannheden 4y ago
100% agreed. Whenever I see something being promoted as "cheapest" I try to stay clear. Not only because you often get what you pay for, but also for reasons like the one you mention.
Double_a_92 4y ago
I guess you wouldn't be buying it if you pirate it.
- shnksi 4y ago
  This is aimed towards physical books. Hopefully if people can access books legally and cheaply it will discourage piracy.
  - lupire 4y ago
    Sort of. Making used boo market more efficient distorts the market and causes a reaction in new book prices. In a perfect used book market, a new copy would cost over >$1000 and a used copy would sell for $5-20 less each time it changed hands.
quickthrower2 4y ago
Clearly this is the cheapest online and legal options. It would be odd and short-lived to include illegally shared books at $0, and a site that shows physical stores would also be odd, since if you are going to a local bookshop you are probably not price sensitive. So for someone shopping online it a good objective, and may take away business from Amazon which is probably a good thing for competition. It is also useful in helping people find books at all, sometimes Amazon doesn't have everything, especially globally.
- mejutoco 4y ago
  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 paper, status of the book, or having good customer support if there is a problem with the order.
  - 867-5309 4y ago
    >quality of paper you are extremely unlikely to find this as book metadata
    - shnksi 4y ago
      You do get "Condition of book" which isn't quite the same thing but helpful along the same thread
      - 867-5309 4y ago
        I would take a coffee-stained, dust-clad, sepia-ridden second edition from a proper publisher over the 20gsm, toxic-inked, loosely-bound crap churned out by Amazon any day
    - mejutoco 4y ago
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deleted 4y ago
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Ligma123 4y ago
>Because if that's the case, book piracy seems like the clear winner. You can read lots of books for free legally in the Internet Archive, specially books that are out of print. > Curation costs money (indirectly). This is mostly done by (big) publishers who want to push their shallow literature series and a couple of good books here and there. Which, again, makes places like the IA so much better for readers like me.
- bryanrasmussen 4y ago
  >You can read lots of books for free legally in the Internet Archive, specially books that are out of print. maybe, but I guess there's also lots that are in a murky gray area https://blog.archive.org/2022/09/03/internet-archive-opposes-publishers-in-federal-lawsuit/ https://blog.archive.org/2022/09/03/internet-archive-opposes...
- socialismisok 4y ago
  I see a lot of "staff recommends" on bookshelves when I shop local, with little blurbs about why the book has had an impact.
sokoloff 4y ago
If I want to discover a book I don’t know about, curation provides value. If I want to attend an event, some place holding an event provides value. If, on the other hand, I know what book I want, the curation is done and I’m not looking for an event, so cheapest seems a reasonable thing to optimize for.
- reaperducer 4y ago
  cheapest seems a reasonable thing to optimize for Until you find out that the cheapest source also waits two weeks to send your book. And sends it by a method that takes another four weeks. And doesn't package it properly so it arrives with the spine broken and water damage. And sends you a used book with pages missing. Or might just accidentally send you the wrong book but doesn't have a customer service contact. The internet used to be a great place for bargains. Now "cheapest" is almost always the wrong choice.
  - shnksi 4y ago
    The site also posts delivery times for vendors. It's usually fairly accurate even if it is a little longer than Amazon's 1-2 days, so at least you know what you're getting into beforehand.
- wpietri 4y ago
  That's one way to think about it. But that may not be enough to sustain the places that provide curation, events, browsing, etc, etc. I've mostly stopped buying books from Amazon. I generally buy them from my local bookstore via their website. Because it turns out I like having a local bookstore, and I think Amazon has quite enough money and power already.
  - SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
    Ive been a huge fan of betterworldbooks since discovering it for university textbooks over a decade ago. They have a pretty massive selection and the money goes to some respectable causes.
gadders 4y ago
I think we have to consider why books exist. There are many reasons such as disseminating knowledge, broadening perspectives, entertainment, but I would think one of them wouldn't be "to let people have a nice job in a shop".
- shnksi 4y ago
  Certainly, but also in terms of disseminating knowledge, broadening perspectives, and entertainment, if people are able to access cheaper books more easily, it will allow them to gain more of all of these things.
  - gadders 4y ago
    Yes, which is what Amazon and other online retailers (love them or hate them) has done for people.
paulcole 4y ago
Cheapest restaurant isn’t The French Laundry w/ the caveat that you skip out on the bill.
sithlord 4y ago
the title states cheapest place to buy a book, not the cheapesst way to acquire a book...
dingaling 4y ago
> Curation costs money In my experience curation beyond the mass-market mainstream is the province of fora and clubs, rather than bookshops and public libraries. The long-tail is so overwhelmingly long and thin that no general-interest vendor can hope to have any insight.
Qwertious 4y ago
For buying an ebook, cheapest is almost always the best option - perhaps a better term might be "least overhead". There's very little actually needed, for ebooks - it could literally just be a plugin for e.g. goodreads, with a "buy this book" button and then it triggers another plugin to send the ISBN to calibre or to download a torrent or do whatever you normally do with your ebook. The point is, the only part the shop really needs to handle is payment. And by "handle" I mean "delegate to paypal etc".
CyberDildonics 4y ago
You think someone shouldn't use the word "cheapest" because they aren't factoring in piracy? Do you think stores that price match should sell an item for $0 if someone shows they can shoplift it? The whole idea is absurd, why would you make a comment like this?
3qz 4y ago
Small book stores are one of the least deserving businesses I can think of. They are no different from drop shippers or amazon resellers. These people buy things they had no responsibility creating and sell it to you for a higher price, injecting themselves as middle men to a transaction where it’s not required and then justifying it with a hobby job they made up themselves. The author gets nothing if the book is used so there’s no reason not to pirate. Cheapest is a great metric when you’re dealing with books.
zasdffaa 4y ago
Piracy is not paying for it. A qualitative difference, really.

kennyloginz 4y ago

I think you might be confusing peoples desires of a physical book, vs bookstore?

socialismisok 4y ago
I want a book, I can choose to buy from a local shop or Amazon or print on demand shop selling a pirated copy. Those options are listed most expensive to cheapest. But a portion of the the sale goes to that business, who in turn passes it on to various places. The local bookshop uses the money to keep an asset in my local community and employs people in my local community. Amazon ships from a warehouse, and provides no local amenity. But they might employ someone locally. Maybe. The print on demand shop is giving me a counterfeit product, but it's the cheapest. It provides no local benefit. So I'm not confusing book for bookstore. I'm specifically saying that the second order effects of seeking the cheapest copy of a book have implications beyond the sale of the book itself.
- kortilla 4y ago
  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.
  - bee_rider 4y ago
    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.
    - 867-5309 4y ago
      >buy a secondhand copy the site's cheapest appear to be exactly that. not only is secondhand the cheapest legal, but also the greenest
    - kortilla 4y ago
      >would say that there's a continuum that goes from downloading an unapproved copy (worst) to buying the book at a local bookstore (best), Because you’re still fixated on bookstores, which tons of people don’t give a shit about. You’re incorrectly putting stuff on a one-dimensional continuum. >or buy a secondhand copy. Being a secondary market participant supports a market. If you don’t want to support publishers, it must be pirated.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    I'm not trying to guilt anyone. Some folks need to optimize for cheap. What I'm trying to say is that cheap might not be the best general metric, and laying out reasoning behind that. I try to avoid saying that someone is bad for choosing cheap, and if I did earlier, I apologize. The goal is to say, "here are some conditions to consider when making a decision".
- lupire 4y ago
  Print on demand is more expensive than Amazon for all but expensive technical books.

shnksi 4y ago

Thanks for your comment, all of that is certainly true. I'm thinking through a solution that would likely come in the form of certain filters on the site. I'd try to get your region as accurately as possible or ask for input, and then serve you local bookstores in your area that have their catalogues online. Something like this would help promote local stores and help you differentiate between your local bookstores. It's not something I've started building yet but what do you think of it?

socialismisok 4y ago
I like it, but most of my local shops don't have their inventory or prices online, sadly.
- shnksi 4y ago
  Hmm that does make it difficult. Perhaps a solution that allows local bookstores to put their catalogues online easily, this data then feeds straight into the search product. It would be difficult and manual to make happen but it could be extremely useful.
  - socialismisok 4y ago
    This feels like a roundabout way to getting bookshop.org, which might not be the cheapest, but is simple to use as a consumer.
  - auggierose 4y ago
    Not sure why local bookstores would like to participate in a race to the bottom, though.
    - TuringTest 4y ago
      Probably because Amazon is already competing with them, and they at least get some independent sales.
  - TuringTest 4y ago

knutwannheden 4y ago

100% agreed. Whenever I see something being promoted as "cheapest" I try to stay clear. Not only because you often get what you pay for, but also for reasons like the one you mention.

Double_a_92 4y ago

I guess you wouldn't be buying it if you pirate it.

shnksi 4y ago
This is aimed towards physical books. Hopefully if people can access books legally and cheaply it will discourage piracy.
- lupire 4y ago
  Sort of. Making used boo market more efficient distorts the market and causes a reaction in new book prices. In a perfect used book market, a new copy would cost over >$1000 and a used copy would sell for $5-20 less each time it changed hands.

quickthrower2 4y ago

Clearly this is the cheapest online and legal options. It would be odd and short-lived to include illegally shared books at $0, and a site that shows physical stores would also be odd, since if you are going to a local bookshop you are probably not price sensitive. So for someone shopping online it a good objective, and may take away business from Amazon which is probably a good thing for competition. It is also useful in helping people find books at all, sometimes Amazon doesn't have everything, especially globally.

mejutoco 4y ago
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 paper, status of the book, or having good customer support if there is a problem with the order.
- 867-5309 4y ago
  >quality of paper you are extremely unlikely to find this as book metadata
  - shnksi 4y ago
    You do get "Condition of book" which isn't quite the same thing but helpful along the same thread
    - 867-5309 4y ago
      I would take a coffee-stained, dust-clad, sepia-ridden second edition from a proper publisher over the 20gsm, toxic-inked, loosely-bound crap churned out by Amazon any day
  - mejutoco 4y ago

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

Ligma123 4y ago

>Because if that's the case, book piracy seems like the clear winner. You can read lots of books for free legally in the Internet Archive, specially books that are out of print. > Curation costs money (indirectly). This is mostly done by (big) publishers who want to push their shallow literature series and a couple of good books here and there. Which, again, makes places like the IA so much better for readers like me.

bryanrasmussen 4y ago
>You can read lots of books for free legally in the Internet Archive, specially books that are out of print. maybe, but I guess there's also lots that are in a murky gray area https://blog.archive.org/2022/09/03/internet-archive-opposes-publishers-in-federal-lawsuit/ https://blog.archive.org/2022/09/03/internet-archive-opposes...
socialismisok 4y ago
I see a lot of "staff recommends" on bookshelves when I shop local, with little blurbs about why the book has had an impact.

sokoloff 4y ago

If I want to discover a book I don’t know about, curation provides value. If I want to attend an event, some place holding an event provides value. If, on the other hand, I know what book I want, the curation is done and I’m not looking for an event, so cheapest seems a reasonable thing to optimize for.

reaperducer 4y ago
cheapest seems a reasonable thing to optimize for Until you find out that the cheapest source also waits two weeks to send your book. And sends it by a method that takes another four weeks. And doesn't package it properly so it arrives with the spine broken and water damage. And sends you a used book with pages missing. Or might just accidentally send you the wrong book but doesn't have a customer service contact. The internet used to be a great place for bargains. Now "cheapest" is almost always the wrong choice.
- shnksi 4y ago
  The site also posts delivery times for vendors. It's usually fairly accurate even if it is a little longer than Amazon's 1-2 days, so at least you know what you're getting into beforehand.
wpietri 4y ago
That's one way to think about it. But that may not be enough to sustain the places that provide curation, events, browsing, etc, etc. I've mostly stopped buying books from Amazon. I generally buy them from my local bookstore via their website. Because it turns out I like having a local bookstore, and I think Amazon has quite enough money and power already.
- SOLAR_FIELDS 4y ago
  Ive been a huge fan of betterworldbooks since discovering it for university textbooks over a decade ago. They have a pretty massive selection and the money goes to some respectable causes.

gadders 4y ago

I think we have to consider why books exist. There are many reasons such as disseminating knowledge, broadening perspectives, entertainment, but I would think one of them wouldn't be "to let people have a nice job in a shop".

shnksi 4y ago
Certainly, but also in terms of disseminating knowledge, broadening perspectives, and entertainment, if people are able to access cheaper books more easily, it will allow them to gain more of all of these things.
- gadders 4y ago
  Yes, which is what Amazon and other online retailers (love them or hate them) has done for people.

paulcole 4y ago

Cheapest restaurant isn’t The French Laundry w/ the caveat that you skip out on the bill.

sithlord 4y ago

the title states cheapest place to buy a book, not the cheapesst way to acquire a book...

dingaling 4y ago

> Curation costs money In my experience curation beyond the mass-market mainstream is the province of fora and clubs, rather than bookshops and public libraries. The long-tail is so overwhelmingly long and thin that no general-interest vendor can hope to have any insight.

Qwertious 4y ago

For buying an ebook, cheapest is almost always the best option - perhaps a better term might be "least overhead". There's very little actually needed, for ebooks - it could literally just be a plugin for e.g. goodreads, with a "buy this book" button and then it triggers another plugin to send the ISBN to calibre or to download a torrent or do whatever you normally do with your ebook. The point is, the only part the shop really needs to handle is payment. And by "handle" I mean "delegate to paypal etc".

CyberDildonics 4y ago

You think someone shouldn't use the word "cheapest" because they aren't factoring in piracy? Do you think stores that price match should sell an item for $0 if someone shows they can shoplift it? The whole idea is absurd, why would you make a comment like this?

3qz 4y ago

Small book stores are one of the least deserving businesses I can think of. They are no different from drop shippers or amazon resellers. These people buy things they had no responsibility creating and sell it to you for a higher price, injecting themselves as middle men to a transaction where it’s not required and then justifying it with a hobby job they made up themselves. The author gets nothing if the book is used so there’s no reason not to pirate. Cheapest is a great metric when you’re dealing with books.

zasdffaa 4y ago

Piracy is not paying for it. A qualitative difference, really.