The following is a public service announcement for Perthans.
Details of the 2010 Save the Children Booksale:
Sale commences on Friday 20th August at 5:00pm.
Venue is the Undercroft of Winthrop Hall (below the Clock Tower) at UWA, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley.
Friday 5:00 – 9:00pm
Saturday* 6:00am – 5:00pm
Sunday 8:00am – 5pm
Monday 9:30am – 6:30pm
Tuesday 9:30am – 6:30pm (half price day)
Wednesday 9:30am – 2pm (bargain box day)
* On the Saturday 21 August 720 ABC Perth presenter James Lush will be broadcasting live from the Undercroft. If you like that sort of thing.
In other news, I woke this morning to numerous tweets about Barbara Kingsolver winning the Orange Prize with her novel The Lacuna. Among the tweets was one from @kobo, also providing a link to its ebook store where you can pick up a copy of The Lacuna in epub format. The price of the ebook at the Kobo ebook store is currently $14.59 (I presume in US dollars). The price at my favourite online bookshop is AUD$12.74 for a paper copy (free delivery) – no ebook copy as yet that I can see. The price at the Australian Borders ebook store is $16.95. Borders is charging $38.95 for a paperback copy (trade paperback I think), which is completely crazy. For comparison I looked at the Dymocks price for the same paperback: $35.00. I looked at Planet Books and Gleebooks and they’re both listing The Lacuna at $35.00 for a paper copy. Amazon has it for USD$17.81 (paper) or $10.70 (Kindle, but I’m not sure if the Kindle edition is available for Australian Kindle users).
What do I conclude here?
- If you like reading on a computer screen or have an ebook reader, get the ebook copy!
- The price of Australian paper books is insane – Book Depository for $12.74, or $35.00 from your local bookshop??! At the time I wasn’t sure if lifting the parallel import restrictions on books would destroy Australian publishing, as the publishers and some authors were claiming, but if we readers can buy from cheaper overseas online vendors anyway, how is this really helping the industry?
- Save money and buy at secondhand charity booksales like the Save the Children sale.
- The best way to save your money would be to just borrow a copy from your local public library. I’m still wondering if any West Australian public libraries offer ebooks for loan…
Congratulations to Barbara Kingsolver! I think The Lacuna is on my To Read List.
8 Comments
I recall in some of the discussion about the parallel import stuff, that folk quoted similar examples from Book Depository (including Tim Winton’s Breathe); some librarians were in favour of maintaining the restrictions and others against. I sort of think that govt folk were hoping noone would notice things like book depository, or if folk do, it’s only a small minority. I still don’t see the point of maintaining such artificial restrictions supposedly in the name of protecting the “local authors”.
On the same note, the local edition of the new Sookie is $30 but it’s somewhere between regular paperback and trade paperback in size. Previous Sookie novels were $23. Supposedly there’s a hardcover for AUD$35-40. I was so tempted to buy last night but couldn’t bring myself to spend 30 bucks on a paperback. Will get the kindle version instead.
Booktopia has the paperback for $27, and a current sale price of $16.
I agree though, paperback prices in Australia are absurd.
I make an effort to buy books by Australian/New Zealand authors from local booksellers, but for international authors I consider it fair game and will generally choose the cheapest option (i.e. Book Depository).
However, new books probably make up less than half of my book collection – most are second-hand copies. Hmm, I might create new/second-hand collections on my LibraryThing to see what the proportion really is 🙂
This has been my gripe since returning from living in the UK. Australian book prices are daylight robbery. Sorry for the repetition, I think I may have had a moan about this to you before.
My local library, Manning/City of South Perth, has a thing where you borrow a device with a book on it, although I can’t remember now if it’s an ebook or an audiobook….
Do you want old books to be brought down / donated?
Liza Dunne
I very rarely buy new books these days because of the high prices. The ‘Save the Children’ book sales at UWA and elsewhere, and ‘Elizabeth’s’ are good sources for second-hand books in good condition.
Book depository is good but I can’t look past betterworldbooks.com – it’s based in the US and they work towards funding literacy worldwide. Dirt cheap too. It’s about US$4 postage per item. Worked out great when I bought the first 8 Sookie books as part of a boxset for $35 and was only charged postage for 1 item. Less than US$40 all up – Dymocks can’t match that!