Not buying books! well, nearly...

I think I may have mentioned elsewhere that I buy most of my books online. This week I received an email asking if I would post about a new site, the UK version of BooksPrice.com, which offers comparisons on book prices. I thought for some time about this, since it isn't a site I've used, and I would be most reluctant to recommend anything I hadn't tried myself. And in the run-up to Christmas, I am trying very hard not to buy any books!

So, with my teeth nobly gritted, I conducted a number of searches on the new site, to see if it would be useful. I tried to look for a representative selection, searching on Murakami, Barbara Pym and Michael Innes, as well as for a couple of young adult books I am looking for. And I very nearly didn't buy a book! (Only I found that The Book Depository now has copies of a book I've been looking for unsuccessfully for a couple of months, that I need for the YA Challenge...)

Readers will have gathered from the above that my book searching experience was a positive one. The comparisons took me to several of my regular sites, on which I would have had to conduct separate searches, but also widens the scope, since it covers sites I don't normally look at. The user interface is particularly straightforward, and lets you, should you wish, search on new books only, as well as offering the price in your chosen currency. Searches can be performed on Author, Title or ISBN and multiple ISBN searches are possible. A price comparison allows you to look at several books and then gives you the price for ordering from one bookseller or several.

All in all, I think BooksPrice.co.uk is a useful site, and worth taking a look at if you regularly buy online. I've bookmarked it, and rather hope that I'll be able to add it to the search box in Firefox before too long.

And I'd better come clean: here's the book I bought. I'm looking forward to reading it.