Welcome to Writers Talkback. If you are a new user, your account will have to be approved manually to prevent spam. Please bear with us in the meantime

Where do you buy your books?

edited May 2006 in - Reading

Comments

  • Do you support your High Street bookshop? Or do you buy the cheapest online? Do you help the author and publisher by buying direct from the latter? Or do you browse in a shop and then buy on the Internet?
  • Bookshops.  Definitely.
  • I like to go into a bookshop and browse, pick books up and fully read the blurb before I buy (just bought two more in Waterstones today, in fact). Most of my friends keep telling me to get with the 21st century and buy online, but I still don't quite trust money transactions online. Guess I've got Luddite ancestors or something.
  • I buy from Waterstones and WHSmith a lot of the time but they don't always have the books I want. I buy from a local independent book shop occasionally. It's more expensive but I like to support them. I also buy from charity shops, second hand shops, jumble sales, church fetes etc. From time to time I buy off the Internet, esp. if it is an obscure title that I'm after. Today I bought a book in the supermarket. Jodi Picault's Vanishing Acts was on special offer. When I got to the checkout I was served by a teenager doing a Sat job and we got into conversation about books. I was really chuffed that a middle-aged biddy like me and a teenager had been reading some of the same books. That's one advantage of NOT buying on-line i.e. getting into conversation with another book lover.
  • I buy books from supermarkets, bookshops, secondhand bookshops, charity shops and sometimes online from Amazon and other sites. I enjoy browsing in bookshops even if I don't buy -though I usually do buy. 
  • I do the same as Stan.
  • Sometimes I'll browse the internet and look at bookshop websites, read the book section of the paper. Then browse the shop, or sometimes it's secondhand. I like to pick up a book, something about it being tactile.
  • Bookshops!! I love to browse, pick up books, smell them, just feel them. But...occasionally I order online. If I really want to have a book and I go looking for it in a shop ...and they don't have it, that's really frustrating. Then I buy it on the net. The HP books for example, I know I want them anyway, so I buy those online. Easy!
    I adore second hand bookshops, especially when I'm in England. It's a shame everything gets so heavy when you buy a lot of books ... and then I have to get back to Holland again. But, with a big smile on my face usually!
  • I live in Hay-on-Wye....
  • Live in Hay-0n-Wye - I'm green with envy!
  • It's on Channel 4 - On The Way To Hay, 7.55pm each evening. About the Festival. I wrote a story once, called 'Making Hay'.
  • Yes, we're all getting ready for the Festival here, and are a bit worried that it's further out of town than it's been in previous years - meaning the Festival goers will have less incentive to browse the bookshops between events.
    However, I am going to the Creative Writing Workshop, and a couple of other things (Jeremy Hardy, Karen Armstrong the theologian and Martin Carthy the folk singer).
  • Evaine, perhaps too many of the festival visitors got side-tracked by the book shops, and they're hoping it will restore the balance.
  • I've been meaning to go to Hay-on-Wye for YEARS! Oh man, that would be the sum of earthly bliss for me! :D

    But, for my sins, I usually buy books from Amazon or e-bay, if it's something I know I want, or I'll browse second hand bookshops, picking up things I didn't know I wanted. I go to a lot of antique fairs and there you'll find a lot of lovely old books.
    I love Waterstones and if I buy books new from shops (which isn't that often because I don't go shopping that often) that's where they'll be from.

    I'm a hoarder... I know I should pass books on or re-sell them once I've finished with them, but I find it very hard to part with a book once it's been in my possession.

    Never lend me a book - lol - j/k
    :D
  • Carol, continuing the Hay Festival tangent, the events are pre-booked, but there is usually time between them for doing other things - like eating for instance!  This year the cafes will suffer too, because there is food available on the Festival site.
  • It all depends. I love bookshops for the browsing. I often go out with no idea of what I want to buy, and I let them lure me in with promises of sexy spines and sultry words.

    If I know exactly what I want, though, I'd often get it from Amazon. Much as I'd love to support book shops, I buy far, far too many books to afford to pay cover price for each and every one of them. Amazon have messed me around a LOT lately, though, so now many of my must-have books come from play.com, Tesco (and mum's staff discount card), Ottakars (I have a fondness for Ottakars' insistence on huge sci-fi / fantasy sections), and Borders.

    I'll also use bookfinder.com if something's particularly hard to come by.
Sign In or Register to comment.