12 ms·

Amazon to close Book Depository online shop

216 points by daviddavis 3y ago

shever73 3y ago
It's a pity they were ever acquired by Amazon. I managed to get some quite obscure stuff from Book Depository before they were assimilated.
ernsheong 3y ago
I'm surprised but not surprised. Books get delivered 2-3 months later, if they ever get delivered at all. Need to contact support for replacement. End up preferring to pay the premium at local booksellers than buying from Book Depo. How do they even make money like this.
- ycombinete 3y ago
  This is really weird, where are you having the books delivered to? I’ve never once had this experience and I’ve ordered at least 100 books from the book depository, for delivery to the Middle East.
  - is_true 3y ago
    Same here, I'm from South America and I've never had a problem
- Hamuko 3y ago
  I've never had that issue. My pre-orders usually arrive within a couple of weeks of release date. Too bad that I have a pre-order for a June release with them.
- barbariangrunge 3y ago
  I've never had these issues
- ernsheong 3y ago
  sorry, I'm from Malaysia
- robjan 3y ago
  Regularly order to HK and they usually come within a week or so.
jnsie 3y ago
This really sucks. Use to ship books to family in Ireland and Britain. Amazon with an ever tightening stranglehold :-(
- masfuerte 3y ago
  I use speedyhen for books in the UK. They are usually as cheap as Amazon and delivery is free. I don't know if they'll accept orders from abroad though.
  - arnoldjm 3y ago
    From their FAQ "Do you deliver overseas?": "We are delighted to say we now offer worldwide shipping." But it ain't cheap.
koboll 3y ago
I wonder if Goodreads is next under the guillotine.
- stanac 3y ago
  Hopefully not, maybe someone should scrape everything from there. I didn't know amazon owned book depo, maybe I should have guessed something has changed when they starting sending increased number of marketing emails a year or two ago. edit: typo
- LiveTheDream 3y ago
  You can request your data here https://www.goodreads.com/user/edit?ref=nav_profile_settings https://www.goodreads.com/user/edit?ref=nav_profile_settings They will send a confirmation email. After you click the link to confirm, it says "We will provide your information to you as soon as we can. Usually, this should take no more than a month." EDIT: you can export your book database as CSV (shelves, ratings, reviews, etc) here https://www.goodreads.com/review/import https://www.goodreads.com/review/import (there's a link towards the top to export...disregard that the URL says "import".
  - bongobingo1 3y ago
    Can it reasonably take a month to export the data from Goodreads? I barely use it but from what I recall its basically lists of will-read and have-read right? Is that delay strictly a "cooling off" sort of tactic?
    - LiveTheDream 3y ago
      I assume this data export includes much more than just the book data (which I just discovered you can get immediately as CVS via https://www.goodreads.com/review/import https://www.goodreads.com/review/import) which might be part of a compliance requirement.
      - LiveTheDream 3y ago
newbie578 3y ago
Definitely disappointed, I used them regularly for the last 6/7 years, ordered from them over 70 books and this feels like a punch in the gut. My country is not served by Amazon Prime, so basically for a single book I have to pay a delivery fee of 10 euros... While on the other hand Book Depository offered a free delivery, although you waited a month or two. Shame, it really sucks, never should have allowed Amazon to buy them.
- orangepurple 3y ago
  Library Genesis knows no borders
paol 3y ago
Wow, didn't see this coming. Though, in retrospect, it's not obvious what value Amazon was getting from running a parallel store. As a customer this sucks. The website was a much better experience than amazon, and the free shipping everywhere was nice.
almog 3y ago
Hopefully this will put regulator on track to pursue anti trust when Amazon attempts similar acquisitions in the future.
McDyver 3y ago
Amazon seems to be following Microsoft's EEE strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...), skipping the Extend
- shever73 3y ago
  Even the "Embrace" is a bit like the embrace of a sarlacc.
- lucasmullens 3y ago
  EEE is about extending open standards in a way that extinguishes the competition, since they can't keep up. Amazon buying a competitor and shutting it down might be monopolistic, but it's not EEE.
  - oska 3y ago
    > skipping the Extend
- manicennui 3y ago
  This is every big tech company for the last couple decades. They buy up their competitors or potential competitors and either immediately or eventually shut them down. I'm sure this will lead to great things.
Aissen 3y ago
They are often cheaper than Amazon in the marketplace, and have a very good reputation. A bit of shame :-/
- Hamuko 3y ago
  They also deliver worldwide for free. Meanwhile ordering a 13.18€ book from Amazon.de will incure 9.85€ in postage because my closest Amazon is an entire Baltic Sea away. (Well, technically Amazon.de has free deliveries too – you just need to buy order at least 99€ worth of them at once)
  - ssijak 3y ago
    "They also deliver worldwide for free.". They calculate shipping in the price. So depending on where you are you will see different price of the book. Still, the only option to get many english books shipped to a big part of the world.
    - Hamuko 3y ago
      Well, "extremely cheap" shipping then. I had that 13.18€ Amazon.de book pre-ordered on Book Depository for 14.00€. So the Amazon.de delivery is 12 times the cost of the Book Depository shipping cost. Had to order it from a local retailer instead since it releases in June, where it cost me 16.10€ with shipping.
    - slyall 3y ago
      I just checked a book ( The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson in paperback ) for shipping to New Zealand. Book Depository is $NZ 21.19 total. Including shipping a NZ Tax (GST). Discounted from $24.77 Amazon is $26.27 for the book, $24 for shipping, $7.50 for tax and $1.30 for "Exchange rate guarantee fee". Total is $NZ 59.27 or almost 3x what Book Depository wanted.
      - EliRivers 3y ago
        $1.30 for "Exchange rate guarantee fee". Wow, are you forced to have that if you make that purchase? That's a huge percentage to charge to cover someone's exchange rate risk over that timespan with those currencies. Someone's making out like an absolute bandit there.
n2j3 3y ago
You can at least export your wishlist to a table-laden html file @ https://www.bookdepository.com/account/wishlist/print https://www.bookdepository.com/account/wishlist/print
activitypea 3y ago
There are no words for how much this sucks. If you are outside the US/EU, reasonably priced books in english aren't easy to find. CompSci literature in English? Forget it, buddy. Book Depository had decent prices with free international shipping to most of the world. Sure, I have to wait a month and sometimes they have to reship because it got damaged in transport, but if I need a book immediately Library Genesis is right there. Book Depository built out my home library for both fiction and non-fiction, and I will miss it dearly. Salute o7
- perch56 3y ago
  I'm inside the EU (Ireland) and "reasonably priced books in English aren't easy to find" unless you're buying pre-owned books and in most cases I can't find what I'm looking for specially when it comes to tech books. As an island, we're very much dependent on Amazon.co.uk for books.
  - shever73 3y ago
    If you're in Dublin then Chapters has a fantastic, on-going (closing down, perhaps?) sale on fiction. I can't find books cheaper on Amazon than there. For tech books, I get the ISBN from Amazon and then order them from Books Upstairs. It is more expensive, but not excessively so.
  - maleno 3y ago
    They don't have everything when it comes to tech or more niche material, but Kenny's (https://www.kennys.ie/ https://www.kennys.ie/) is very good and offers free (and often fast) shipping.
    - Symbiote 3y ago
      That also looks like a good alternative for the EU and some other countries, with delivery at €1 per book. (Just not the USA, which is €9.50 for some reason.) https://www.kennys.ie/delivery-details https://www.kennys.ie/delivery-details
  - whoknowswho 3y ago
gregdoesit 3y ago
I do wonder if Brexit and customs to be paid for all of the EU has anything to do with this decision. Book Depsitory is based in the UK. I have inadvertently ordered from them, to the Netherlands, as they had a “Bookdepository NL” store, which made it seem like they are an EU entity. However, when the book arrived, I was hit by unexpected customs charges that were half the price of the book. Looking at recent reviews, there was a surge of these complaints from all customers in the Netherlands [1] Perhaps the timing on these customs surges are accidental, of course. But I can’t imagine that Brexit helped with their EU sales. [1] https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1638824647390003206 https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1638824647390003206
- Hamuko 3y ago
  I've never ever had to pay VAT at the customs for Book Depository orders in Finland. My most recent order came in March and I had a pre-order for June.
  - thomond 3y ago
    Are books VAT free in Finland? They are in the UK and Ireland so I have never had customs either (in Ireland). Perhaps they are not VAT free in NL.
    - Hamuko 3y ago
      Books are in the lowered VAT category of 10%. There's very few things in Finland that are actually VAT free. Ebooks used to be in the general VAT category of 24% but I think they've fixed that now.
  - Broken_Hippo 3y ago
    I haven't in Norway either, but books are exempt from VAT.
- thomond 3y ago
  Are books VAT free in NL? If not that's probably why.
rapfaria 3y ago
AbeBooks next?
_trackno5 3y ago
Goddammit, I had no idea Amazon owned Book Depository. Their service was great and it was the best way I had to buy technical books when i lived in Brazil.
L0in 3y ago
NOOO. C'MON... WTF AMAZON
toastercat 3y ago
In case anyone cares, I started looking for online bookseller alternatives to Amazon a while ago, and have generally enjoyed shopping with Alibris.
- slyall 3y ago
  International shipping at Alibris is around $US 20 per book.
rcarr 3y ago
This does suck for obvious reasons, but I also think we need to get a good, thin, eInk tablet like Remarkable or Boox Note down to the sub 100 usd/gbp price. Kindles are ok but they’re too small for textbooks and you’re also locked into Amazon. Plus they’re read only (apart from the latest one), and the new generation of tablets around atm can serve as paper like notebooks as well as eReaders. I like reading paper books as much as the next guy but it is hard to justify sending millions of books each year all over the world when we could send them over the wire for a fraction of the cost and pollution.
- rvba 3y ago
  Until they decide to retroactively delete your book, or change the text, because someone didnt like it. Or more prosaic "feature": ban the book in your region.
  - rcarr 3y ago
    Well if it’s in a proprietary format, then sure. But if it’s not then no, they can’t do that. And it’s not like paper books haven’t been subjected to regional bans and text changes (see the recent roald Dahl news) so I don’t know what you’re getting at there. People can still import paper books regardless and people can get around digital restrictions through things like VPNs, torrents and what not also. There’s nothing stopping someone from sending a usb stick with an entire library of books into a country either and arguably a lot easier than sending one paperback as you could hide a usb in anything.
kawera 3y ago
First dpreview.com, now this. I wonder who's next...
- operatingthetan 3y ago
  Alexa? Have they ever made a dime on it?
  - kawera 3y ago
    Probably never, same with that hardware "buy" button they have/had.
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
yardie 3y ago
It took longer than I thought. Amazon bought TBD over a decade ago. I figured they would have snuffed them out years ago. It was a sad day when they got bought by Amazon. Good luck to the team.
xjrp 3y ago
Good, of 4 books I ordered in two different order I received one. It was so poorly packed…
jcmontx 3y ago
This breaks my heart. I've found so many books which are imposible to find in my country.
mabbo 3y ago
Seems a simple plan to address a competitor. Buy it. Invest nothing major into it. Wait for the economy to take a downturn and shut it down because it isn't profitable.
unmole 3y ago
From the comments I got: 1. It was a good place to buy English books in non-English speaking countries. 2. The shipping was free (Actually, folded into the price of the book and location dependent) 3. Delivery could take anywhere between a few weeks to months. I'm wondering if it would be viable to offer an alternative service out of India and I'm willing to try out an experiment: Post the title of a book you would have bought via Book Depository and I'll try to send it out to you for free. Just let me know when the book arrives and in what condition so as to gauge how reliable the postal network is. I don't have a budget in mind but I'd like to ship at least 5 books to different geographies.
- JamesAdir 3y ago
  At least to my country, BD shipped envelops with books and declared them as print media, it seems to have a international very low postage tariffs. When I get books from Amazon they are always shipped in boxes and that is packages and subjected to much higher tariff and customs fee if above a certain value.
- activitypea 3y ago
  How do you get a vast catalogue of physical copies of English books in India?
  - unmole 3y ago
    English books are widely and cheaply available in India. Or did I misunderstand your question?
    - activitypea 3y ago
      Huh, cool. I imagined in most non-english speaking countries (outside of EU), getting English literature isn't easy.
      - unmole 3y ago
        While the number of native speakers is minuscule, English is widely used in India. And according to Nielsen, India is the second largest English-language book market in the world.
lethologica 3y ago
At least half of my library came from BookDepository so this makes me really sad. It’s so expensive to get books shipped to Australia.
yakubin 3y ago
That’s a bummer. Most of the technical books I bought on Amazon were supplied by Book Depository. Are they going to just disappear now?
jakub_g 3y ago
Living in France, to buy technical books in English for sensible money and without onerous shipping cost, I always used Amazon and the books were often delivered by Book Depository. Wondering how things will be after it closes.

216 points by daviddavis 3y ago

It's a pity they were ever acquired by Amazon. I managed to get some quite obscure stuff from Book Depository before they were assimilated.

ernsheong 3y ago

I'm surprised but not surprised. Books get delivered 2-3 months later, if they ever get delivered at all. Need to contact support for replacement. End up preferring to pay the premium at local booksellers than buying from Book Depo. How do they even make money like this.

ycombinete 3y ago
This is really weird, where are you having the books delivered to? I’ve never once had this experience and I’ve ordered at least 100 books from the book depository, for delivery to the Middle East.
- is_true 3y ago
  Same here, I'm from South America and I've never had a problem
Hamuko 3y ago
I've never had that issue. My pre-orders usually arrive within a couple of weeks of release date. Too bad that I have a pre-order for a June release with them.
barbariangrunge 3y ago
I've never had these issues
ernsheong 3y ago
sorry, I'm from Malaysia
robjan 3y ago
Regularly order to HK and they usually come within a week or so.

jnsie 3y ago

This really sucks. Use to ship books to family in Ireland and Britain. Amazon with an ever tightening stranglehold :-(

masfuerte 3y ago
I use speedyhen for books in the UK. They are usually as cheap as Amazon and delivery is free. I don't know if they'll accept orders from abroad though.
- arnoldjm 3y ago
  From their FAQ "Do you deliver overseas?": "We are delighted to say we now offer worldwide shipping." But it ain't cheap.

koboll 3y ago

I wonder if Goodreads is next under the guillotine.

stanac 3y ago
Hopefully not, maybe someone should scrape everything from there. I didn't know amazon owned book depo, maybe I should have guessed something has changed when they starting sending increased number of marketing emails a year or two ago. edit: typo
LiveTheDream 3y ago
You can request your data here https://www.goodreads.com/user/edit?ref=nav_profile_settings https://www.goodreads.com/user/edit?ref=nav_profile_settings They will send a confirmation email. After you click the link to confirm, it says "We will provide your information to you as soon as we can. Usually, this should take no more than a month." EDIT: you can export your book database as CSV (shelves, ratings, reviews, etc) here https://www.goodreads.com/review/import https://www.goodreads.com/review/import (there's a link towards the top to export...disregard that the URL says "import".
- bongobingo1 3y ago
  Can it reasonably take a month to export the data from Goodreads? I barely use it but from what I recall its basically lists of will-read and have-read right? Is that delay strictly a "cooling off" sort of tactic?
  - LiveTheDream 3y ago
    I assume this data export includes much more than just the book data (which I just discovered you can get immediately as CVS via https://www.goodreads.com/review/import https://www.goodreads.com/review/import) which might be part of a compliance requirement.
    - LiveTheDream 3y ago

newbie578 3y ago

Definitely disappointed, I used them regularly for the last 6/7 years, ordered from them over 70 books and this feels like a punch in the gut. My country is not served by Amazon Prime, so basically for a single book I have to pay a delivery fee of 10 euros... While on the other hand Book Depository offered a free delivery, although you waited a month or two. Shame, it really sucks, never should have allowed Amazon to buy them.

orangepurple 3y ago
Library Genesis knows no borders

paol 3y ago

Wow, didn't see this coming. Though, in retrospect, it's not obvious what value Amazon was getting from running a parallel store. As a customer this sucks. The website was a much better experience than amazon, and the free shipping everywhere was nice.

almog 3y ago

Hopefully this will put regulator on track to pursue anti trust when Amazon attempts similar acquisitions in the future.

McDyver 3y ago

Amazon seems to be following Microsoft's EEE strategy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...), skipping the Extend

shever73 3y ago
Even the "Embrace" is a bit like the embrace of a sarlacc.
lucasmullens 3y ago
EEE is about extending open standards in a way that extinguishes the competition, since they can't keep up. Amazon buying a competitor and shutting it down might be monopolistic, but it's not EEE.
- oska 3y ago
  > skipping the Extend
manicennui 3y ago
This is every big tech company for the last couple decades. They buy up their competitors or potential competitors and either immediately or eventually shut them down. I'm sure this will lead to great things.

Aissen 3y ago

They are often cheaper than Amazon in the marketplace, and have a very good reputation. A bit of shame :-/

Hamuko 3y ago
They also deliver worldwide for free. Meanwhile ordering a 13.18€ book from Amazon.de will incure 9.85€ in postage because my closest Amazon is an entire Baltic Sea away. (Well, technically Amazon.de has free deliveries too – you just need to buy order at least 99€ worth of them at once)
- ssijak 3y ago
  "They also deliver worldwide for free.". They calculate shipping in the price. So depending on where you are you will see different price of the book. Still, the only option to get many english books shipped to a big part of the world.
  - Hamuko 3y ago
    Well, "extremely cheap" shipping then. I had that 13.18€ Amazon.de book pre-ordered on Book Depository for 14.00€. So the Amazon.de delivery is 12 times the cost of the Book Depository shipping cost. Had to order it from a local retailer instead since it releases in June, where it cost me 16.10€ with shipping.
  - slyall 3y ago
    I just checked a book ( The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson in paperback ) for shipping to New Zealand. Book Depository is $NZ 21.19 total. Including shipping a NZ Tax (GST). Discounted from $24.77 Amazon is $26.27 for the book, $24 for shipping, $7.50 for tax and $1.30 for "Exchange rate guarantee fee". Total is $NZ 59.27 or almost 3x what Book Depository wanted.
    - EliRivers 3y ago
      $1.30 for "Exchange rate guarantee fee". Wow, are you forced to have that if you make that purchase? That's a huge percentage to charge to cover someone's exchange rate risk over that timespan with those currencies. Someone's making out like an absolute bandit there.

n2j3 3y ago

You can at least export your wishlist to a table-laden html file @ https://www.bookdepository.com/account/wishlist/print https://www.bookdepository.com/account/wishlist/print

activitypea 3y ago

There are no words for how much this sucks. If you are outside the US/EU, reasonably priced books in english aren't easy to find. CompSci literature in English? Forget it, buddy. Book Depository had decent prices with free international shipping to most of the world. Sure, I have to wait a month and sometimes they have to reship because it got damaged in transport, but if I need a book immediately Library Genesis is right there. Book Depository built out my home library for both fiction and non-fiction, and I will miss it dearly. Salute o7

perch56 3y ago
I'm inside the EU (Ireland) and "reasonably priced books in English aren't easy to find" unless you're buying pre-owned books and in most cases I can't find what I'm looking for specially when it comes to tech books. As an island, we're very much dependent on Amazon.co.uk for books.
- shever73 3y ago
  If you're in Dublin then Chapters has a fantastic, on-going (closing down, perhaps?) sale on fiction. I can't find books cheaper on Amazon than there. For tech books, I get the ISBN from Amazon and then order them from Books Upstairs. It is more expensive, but not excessively so.
- maleno 3y ago
  They don't have everything when it comes to tech or more niche material, but Kenny's (https://www.kennys.ie/ https://www.kennys.ie/) is very good and offers free (and often fast) shipping.
  - Symbiote 3y ago
    That also looks like a good alternative for the EU and some other countries, with delivery at €1 per book. (Just not the USA, which is €9.50 for some reason.) https://www.kennys.ie/delivery-details https://www.kennys.ie/delivery-details
- whoknowswho 3y ago

gregdoesit 3y ago

I do wonder if Brexit and customs to be paid for all of the EU has anything to do with this decision. Book Depsitory is based in the UK. I have inadvertently ordered from them, to the Netherlands, as they had a “Bookdepository NL” store, which made it seem like they are an EU entity. However, when the book arrived, I was hit by unexpected customs charges that were half the price of the book. Looking at recent reviews, there was a surge of these complaints from all customers in the Netherlands [1] Perhaps the timing on these customs surges are accidental, of course. But I can’t imagine that Brexit helped with their EU sales. [1] https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1638824647390003206 https://twitter.com/gergelyorosz/status/1638824647390003206

Hamuko 3y ago
I've never ever had to pay VAT at the customs for Book Depository orders in Finland. My most recent order came in March and I had a pre-order for June.
- thomond 3y ago
  Are books VAT free in Finland? They are in the UK and Ireland so I have never had customs either (in Ireland). Perhaps they are not VAT free in NL.
  - Hamuko 3y ago
    Books are in the lowered VAT category of 10%. There's very few things in Finland that are actually VAT free. Ebooks used to be in the general VAT category of 24% but I think they've fixed that now.
- Broken_Hippo 3y ago
  I haven't in Norway either, but books are exempt from VAT.
thomond 3y ago
Are books VAT free in NL? If not that's probably why.

rapfaria 3y ago

AbeBooks next?

_trackno5 3y ago

Goddammit, I had no idea Amazon owned Book Depository. Their service was great and it was the best way I had to buy technical books when i lived in Brazil.

L0in 3y ago

NOOO. C'MON... WTF AMAZON

toastercat 3y ago

In case anyone cares, I started looking for online bookseller alternatives to Amazon a while ago, and have generally enjoyed shopping with Alibris.

slyall 3y ago
International shipping at Alibris is around $US 20 per book.

rcarr 3y ago

This does suck for obvious reasons, but I also think we need to get a good, thin, eInk tablet like Remarkable or Boox Note down to the sub 100 usd/gbp price. Kindles are ok but they’re too small for textbooks and you’re also locked into Amazon. Plus they’re read only (apart from the latest one), and the new generation of tablets around atm can serve as paper like notebooks as well as eReaders. I like reading paper books as much as the next guy but it is hard to justify sending millions of books each year all over the world when we could send them over the wire for a fraction of the cost and pollution.

rvba 3y ago
Until they decide to retroactively delete your book, or change the text, because someone didnt like it. Or more prosaic "feature": ban the book in your region.
- rcarr 3y ago
  Well if it’s in a proprietary format, then sure. But if it’s not then no, they can’t do that. And it’s not like paper books haven’t been subjected to regional bans and text changes (see the recent roald Dahl news) so I don’t know what you’re getting at there. People can still import paper books regardless and people can get around digital restrictions through things like VPNs, torrents and what not also. There’s nothing stopping someone from sending a usb stick with an entire library of books into a country either and arguably a lot easier than sending one paperback as you could hide a usb in anything.

kawera 3y ago

First dpreview.com, now this. I wonder who's next...

operatingthetan 3y ago
Alexa? Have they ever made a dime on it?
- kawera 3y ago
  Probably never, same with that hardware "buy" button they have/had.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]

yardie 3y ago

It took longer than I thought. Amazon bought TBD over a decade ago. I figured they would have snuffed them out years ago. It was a sad day when they got bought by Amazon. Good luck to the team.

xjrp 3y ago

Good, of 4 books I ordered in two different order I received one. It was so poorly packed…

jcmontx 3y ago

This breaks my heart. I've found so many books which are imposible to find in my country.

mabbo 3y ago

Seems a simple plan to address a competitor. Buy it. Invest nothing major into it. Wait for the economy to take a downturn and shut it down because it isn't profitable.

unmole 3y ago

From the comments I got: 1. It was a good place to buy English books in non-English speaking countries. 2. The shipping was free (Actually, folded into the price of the book and location dependent) 3. Delivery could take anywhere between a few weeks to months. I'm wondering if it would be viable to offer an alternative service out of India and I'm willing to try out an experiment: Post the title of a book you would have bought via Book Depository and I'll try to send it out to you for free. Just let me know when the book arrives and in what condition so as to gauge how reliable the postal network is. I don't have a budget in mind but I'd like to ship at least 5 books to different geographies.

JamesAdir 3y ago
At least to my country, BD shipped envelops with books and declared them as print media, it seems to have a international very low postage tariffs. When I get books from Amazon they are always shipped in boxes and that is packages and subjected to much higher tariff and customs fee if above a certain value.
activitypea 3y ago
How do you get a vast catalogue of physical copies of English books in India?
- unmole 3y ago
  English books are widely and cheaply available in India. Or did I misunderstand your question?
  - activitypea 3y ago
    Huh, cool. I imagined in most non-english speaking countries (outside of EU), getting English literature isn't easy.
    - unmole 3y ago
      While the number of native speakers is minuscule, English is widely used in India. And according to Nielsen, India is the second largest English-language book market in the world.

lethologica 3y ago

At least half of my library came from BookDepository so this makes me really sad. It’s so expensive to get books shipped to Australia.

yakubin 3y ago

That’s a bummer. Most of the technical books I bought on Amazon were supplied by Book Depository. Are they going to just disappear now?

jakub_g 3y ago

Living in France, to buy technical books in English for sensible money and without onerous shipping cost, I always used Amazon and the books were often delivered by Book Depository. Wondering how things will be after it closes.