Welcome to online-rare-books.co.uk - Information on Used books for sale

A Users Guide for Conservative Bibliophiles

For years conservatives had to ransack used bookshops for those out-of-print classics of Russell Kirk, Clinton Rossiter, Richard Weaver, Le Bon, Sumner, Mises, Hilaire Belloc, Ernest van den Haag, C. S. Lewis, and G. K. Chesterton.

Randomly browsing the shelves of a local second-hand dealer will turn up a scarce volume or two, but often such blind quests can prove to be an exercise in futility. Just wading through the stacks of recycled modern pop fiction is enough to trigger a migraine!

However, with the proliferation of the antiquarian book trade on the Internet, an avid book reader can turn up those favorite conservative titles by surfing the web from home on his desktop computer-if he knows where to look.

There are millions of used and out-of-print books for sale on the web from thousands of used book dealers across North America and the UK. More and more dealers are regularly updating their stock on the Internet-some on a daily basis. Prospective buyers can shop around for bargains rather than pay top dollar for an out-of-print title.

This cache of books is accessible from several search engines. One of the better meta-search engines for used books is www.addall.com, which is a more recent competitor of www.bookfinder.com-one of the earlier meta-search engines for used books on the Internet.

The advantage of using addall.com is that it is faster than bookfinder.com and most other comparable search engines. Also, the user can narrow the search with descriptive key words (first edition, hardcover, paperback, publisher, publication date, dust jacket, etc.) in order to refine the search.

For instance, say you wanted to look for selected volumes in a multi-volume set, but the work is also widely available in an abridged edition, by refining the search with additional information, like volume number or date of publication (if known), you can eliminate unwanted selections, especially if you are seeking one or more volumes in an unabridged edition.

Arnold Toynbee's ten-volume Study of History is a good example, which was first published in 1939, but has appeared in several impressions over the years. Although the single volume and two-volume abridged versions are more commonly available, individual volumes and complete sets of the unabridged edition can be easily found on the Internet with the right search.

Addall.com lists the search results in an easier and less cumbersome format than bookfinder. Another nice feature of addall.com is that a good number of dealers are listed by city and state in the summary information below the title description.

Some bookworms may already be familiar with some of the more well-established search engines on the Internet, such as ABE, Bibliofind, etc., but the advantage of searching addall.com or bookfinder.com is that each search combines most of these other separate search sites together in one big sweep, producing a more comprehensive set of results.

Likewise, the disadvantage of using ABE, Bibliofind (which has merged with Amazon.com), Alibris, and TomFolio.com is that they limit the available range of book dealers.

As with most search engines, users can identify individual shops and call or email the proprietor directly as to a title's availability. It saves the buyer the hassle of having to make the purchase through the search provider and can often save time and the provider fee in the process.

However, there are a fair number of specialized dealers who are worth checking out on the web.

Hamiltonbooks.com, half.com, and strandbooks.com offer recently published books at discounted prices, often for a fraction of the cost of what Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Books-a-Million lists.

Military and European history aficionados will want to check out qmdabney.com (Q.M. Dabney & Co.). Dabney has probably the single largest collection of books by Maj. Gen. J.F.C. Fuller, perhaps more than any other antiquarian dealer on the Internet.

Some large used bookstores, such as Powells.com, Zubal.com (Zubal Books), and bookbarn.com (Balwin's Book Barn) provide searchable web pages on the Internet and are set up with secured sites for direct purchases with a credit card.

Two exceptionally well-stocked antiquarian dealers for out-of-print books in the social sciences, particularly the history of psychology and behavioral sciences are scholarlybooks.com and gach.com (John Gach Books). Scholarlybooks.com provides periodic catalogs of their selections and usually offers a list of discounted titles. Gach tends to be higher in price, but provides detailed descriptions of his inventory.

For additional information on individual used book dealers, readers should consult the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America website at www.abaa.org.