If you like reading physical books—and who doesn’t—there’s a way to shop online for the cheapest price of a paperback or hardback.
Here’s how to use BookButler, an online aggregator that lists the price, shipping cost, total cost of a given book, from cheapest to most expensive for all online physical book dealers:
- Make sure you have the ISBN of the book you want to buy. Either the ten- or thirteen-digit ISBN will do. Note: each edition—hardback, trade, mass market—will have its own ISBN.
- If you don’t have the ISBN, go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, do a search for the book, and choose the edition you want to buy. The ISBN is included in the product description.
- In your browser’s address field, type in bookbutler.com or click on this link: BookButler
- Type the ISBN in the Search field. You can use hyphens if you wish, or not.
- Click Search.
- A small image of the cover appears. Click Compare Prices.
- A screen like the one above pops into view, listing all locations, the price of the book, the shipping, the total.
- Take a look at the tabs. In this case, 27 online book dealers have the book I want, either a new or used version. Twenty-three stock a new copy; four have used copies; ten are in the US; fourteen sell through Amazon.
- Clicking on View takes you to the buy page for each dealer.
- Notice also that you can update the list by choosing a different Ship To and/or using a different currency.
Simple, no?
