Buying Books

Introduction

I believe that many visitors to this site expect to find a list of books for sale, but I regret this is not the case. On a positive note, however, I can offer the following guidance on their purchase.

Books in print

When you take into account the small number of bowls books being published each year (see Books by Decade) you shouldn't be surprised if you fail to find even one title in your local bookstore. Even the giant online bookstore Amazon currently has only about half a dozen in-print titles available. (Be careful when browsing this site as the word 'new' is sometimes used by Amazon Marketplace sellers to describe the condition of a book published several years ago.) NotonlyBowls also has a number of new copies of books - some published more than a decade ago. Once you've located the title you want, it's worth finding the best bargain at a price comparison site such as the impressive BookFinder.com. One supplier not currently covered by BookFinder's search engine, and therefore worth bookmarking separately, is The Book Depository. Founded in 2004 it already has over one million customers and claims to be the fastest growing book distributor in Europe.

Second-hand books

Traditional sources of used books include second-hand bookshops, book fairs, auctions, car boot sales, fetes and charity shops, but the advent of the Internet has increased the options significantly. There are two main online sources - second-hand booksellers and auctions.

Online second-hand book booksellers

Google lists a huge number of these suppliers, but the task of searching for a particular title has been greatly facilitated by the availability of a number of book-oriented meta search engines. Try BookFinder.com which searches over 150 million books from more than 100,000 booksellers in over 50 countries. Many books offered for sale by Amazon through their Marketplace facility are very competitively priced, but as BookFinder.com includes five Amazon sites in its search, there's no need to search Amazon separately. Although not a traditional bookseller NotonlyBowls lists a number of second-hand titles, and descriptive text alongside each book is a useful addition.

Online auctions

The granddaddy of all auction sites is eBay and an appropriate search will often prove successful in finding a number of titles, but the fixed prices at Amazon Marketplace will frequently prove to be a better buy. Having said that, eBay can provide good opportunities for bidding successfully for scarcer titles and landing a bargain.

A site that always seems to have a fair number of bowls books on offer is Trade Me; the downside for many potential bidders though is that in order to register for bidding, you must be a resident of New Zealand or Australia.

Finally, be aware that bowls books sold from the USA are usually exorbitantly priced.

Good hunting!

Please note that the Amazon, Google and eBay links provided above refer to the UK sites.