Books: new or not new, that is the question

[pne]

I was having a look at what I could get with the Amazon.de gift certificate I got from work, and thought I'd get some linguistics books.

I had narrowed it down to a number of books based on recommendations from the CONLANG-L denizens, what looked interesting, and what fit into the budget, and thought I had a decent collection for just a couple of euros more than what the gift certificate was worth.

But then I had second thoughts: do I really need those books new, or would it be better to try to get hold of used copies, e.g. through AbeBooks?

Advantage: might be cheaper. Disadvantages: can't use the gift certificate and would have to pay out of pocket; difficult to figure out at a glance how much shipping to Germany will be (the list view only shows shipping inside the same country as the bookseller, apparently); would probably have to order from a number of booksellers rather than being able to "one-stop shop"; many of the results are new anyway so I'd not be saving that much -- or I'd have to spend more time looking around.

Sounds as if Amazon.de "has the nose ahead", as they say in German, but still... hm.

(Other nagging thoughts are whether I ought to buy some more computing-related books, of which there isn't a shortage on my Amazon wishlist, either, or some novels I read and enjoyed as a young boy. Or even a number of mixed English/German books, e.g. Butler & Graf. Hm.)

I wish that linguistics and computer texts weren't so expensive: $50 for a book seems average, and even at the current favourable exchange rate you can only get so many books for your euros. Something like $20 each would be nicer :)

Comments

[nitaq.livejournal.com]

Can't you find someone who definitely wants to buy something from Amazon and trade your gift certificate with that person?

[pne.livejournal.com]

Ooh, clever -- I hadn't even considered that possibility. Might be worth looking into.

I also remembered after posting the entry that you can buy used books via Amazon. I'm not sure whether it's possible to use GC for that, though.

[bride.livejournal.com]

New books are nice, especially if it's going to be free anyway =)

And I've slowly come to accept that, gone are the days when anything that should be $20 is actually priced reasonably anymore. =\

[pne.livejournal.com]

Yes! I figured that it's "free money", so even if I end up getting something "sub-optimal", by any definition, I won't be worse off than I was before. So perhaps I should simply stress less about the whole thing.