Buy Independent Books, Movies and Music from Alibris

Alibris: Books, Music, & Movies

Do you know about Alibris? It is another way of buying books, music and movies online. We all know about Amazon, the leading online retailer. Most people also know about Barnes & Noble. They are the major brick and mortar bookseller that hasn’t gone bankrupt yet. (As opposed to Border’s, which has.) Barnes & Nobles are staying afloat by having their own online sales presence, in addition to their traditional bookstores.

But if you can’t find what you want at either Barnes & Nobles or Amazon, then you might consider searching through Alibris. They sell used and new and even rare books, movies and music. The way it works is like this: independent booksellers list their inventories with Alibris. When you order a book from Alibris, chances are you are going to have it shipped to you directly from the bookseller that stocks it. If you order the book online, and it is a rare or used book, you might just beat out an in-store customer that wanted it, too. Alibris also allows their customers to list and to sell their own books, music and movies on their site. They charge a base fee and a commission to sellers.

Just to give you an example of how Alibris compares to Barnes and Noble and Amazon, let’s pick a topic and see how many books we can find on that topic at each of the sellers. Let’s say we are looking for books about Hannibal of Carthage. How many books can we find on Amazon?

That’s not bad, right? Now let’s take a look at Barnes & Noble. They have a whole page full of Hannibal books.

Many of the same books are listed on Amazon as well as on Barnes & Noble. Examples of Books available on Barnes & Noble that are not available on Amazon are:

and

Now let’s take a look at the selection of books about Hannibal of Carthage available on Alibris. Many are the same books we already encountered on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. But some are quite different:

They even have listed some books that are long, long out of print. Two of my favorites are Hannibal of Carthage by Mary Dolan and Hannibal by Ernle Bradford.You can order them through Alibris, and the independent bookstore that actually stocks them will ship the books to you.

It’s good to have an account with Amazon and be able to buy online — without paying local sales tax — any book that is currently available in most other stores. It’s also good to sometimes walk into a Barnes & Noble store, handle the merchandise, and later decide to order it online. (They don’t lose when we do this, because we buy fruit smoothies and cheesecake at exorbitant prices while we are there.)

But it is also good to know that if the big stores don’t have it, we might be able to find something rare and wonderful and have it shipped to us directly from the little shop that has it on its shelves or the individual reader who is willing to part with it. That’s where Alibris comes in.

© 2o11 Aya Katz