Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Secondhand Bookshops – One (this one is online)

In my previous two posts, I have been talking about this online secondhand bookshop where I searched and finally found and received 6 books by John D. MacDonald … 

Ok, let me end the suspense and reveal the name of this online secondhand books site … not that I wanted to keep it secret or something … it is just that I wanted to have a direct buying experience before telling about it to all of you … most of you might have already visited this site … anyway, the name of the site is direct, as one of those hard-boiled gumshoes would have liked … 


I have been visiting this site for the last one month or so in search of books by Simon Brett, Paul Theroux, and others … the hit rate was not great, but was not disappointing and I kept my search on … I like buying 3 to 4 books at a time and wanted to put together a decent number before I bought them …

When Vinod told me about Ross Macdonald, the first thing I did was to check this website … as narrated earlier, instead of ‘Ross,’ I found ‘John D.’ … but I went with ‘John D.’ anyway and after checking online, decided to buy the 5 books featuring the detective Travis McGee and 1 book on John D.’s early mystery stories …

My buying experience was good, the packing was well done, and the books arrived in good condition … I am a satisfied customer … I did a general search for some well-known writers and there are at least a couple of books on each of them … and more books under thrillers and popular fiction … the prices are not very high … but don’t expect Abids street prices … you can get a good book for Rs.75/- … of course, some used books cost more … but again, if you are the type who’d rather sit at home and click books, you have to pay the second-hand bookseller for putting the books together in searchable format for you … and in case you have specific requests, you can always mail and let them know … sort of keeps them on their toes …

The buying process is slightly loopy here … you have to first register, and then ‘deposit’ some money, and then buy books and keep checking as the balance decreases … something like ‘prepaid’ … helps you to maintain your balance!!

So, happy buying then … 

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