Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 23:33:38 -0500
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Sender: The Internet TourBus - A virtual tour of cyberspace
Comments: Resent-From: crispen@netsquirrel.com
Comments: Originally-From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
From: Patrick Douglas Crispen
Subject: TOURBUS -- 20 MAY 1999 -- ADDALL.COM
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TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S):
AddAll.com
TODAY'S TOURBUS ADDRESSES:
http://www.addall.com/
http://www.addall.com/Used/index.html
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On with the show ...
---------------------------------
1 2 3 4 ... I DECLARE A PRICE WAR
---------------------------------
Three days ago, the folks at Amazon.com [ http://www.amazon.com/ ]
touched off an online price war when they announced that they will sell
books from the current New York Times bestseller list at 50 percent
off the cover price. Within hours, Borders [ http://www.borders.com / ]
and Barnes and Noble [ http://www.barnesandnoble.com ] announced that
they too will offer half price discounts on New York Times bestsellers.
Unfortunately, these discounts only apply to online purchases --
Borders' and Barnes and Noble's real-world, storefront operations will
not be offering similar discounts.
The online discounts, however, are real. The only confusing thing is
that Amazon.com's list of New York Times bestsellers is different than
the bestseller list used by Borders, Barnes and Noble, and even the New
York Times Web site [the Times' list can be found online at
http://www.nytimes.com/books/yr/mo/day/bsp/besthardfiction.html ]. For
some reason, Amazon is (at least at the time of this writing) using _next
week's_ bestseller list; Borders and Barnes and Noble (and the New
York Times Web site) are still using _this week's_ list. Since the
bestseller list changes from week to week, and since the bookstores are
using different bestseller lists, it is conceivable that Amazon will be
offering discounts not offered by Borders and Barnes and Noble, and vice
versa. The moral of this story? Shop around.
Of course, shopping around takes time. That's where our first TOURBUS
stop comes in [was this a long intro or WHAT!]. If you are looking for
a free way to compare book prices at 37 different online bookstores,
point your Web browser to the "AddAll.com" Web site at
http://www.addall.com/ .
AddAll.com is a free, online bookstore search engine. Key in a few
simple search terms, and the site will tell you how much it will cost
to have a particular book shipped to you from each of 37 different
online bookstores. AddAll.com's database includes all of the major
"players" (including Amazon.com, BarnesandNoble.com, and Borders.com) as
well as a few bookstores I have never heard of (including Cody's Books,
Alphabet Street, and Alphacraze). When you find the lowest price for
the book you are looking for, just click a link on AddAll's page and
you are automatically transported to the appropriate bookstore's
homepage.
The AddAll.com site itself is quite easy to use. All you have to do is:
1. Choose your shipping destination from the pull-down list.
[AddAll will tell you how much each of the 37 bookstores will
charge you to ship a book anywhere in the world.]
2. Choose the currency units you want to use [AddAll will compute
your purchase and shipping costs in one of up to 20 different
currencies from the US dollar to the Euro to the Malaysian
Ringgit.]
3. Define your search by Title, ISBN, Author, or keyword.
4. Key in your search term(s).
5. Click on the "Click to Find" button.
For example, let's see how much it will cost me to order Tom Clancy's
book "Rainbow Six" and have it delivered to my home in Ala-backwards. I
key in all of the appropriate information and click on the "Click to
Find" button. What comes up is a screen that is similar to what you
would see if you did a keyword search at Dogpile or AltaVista.
One of the most frustrating things about AddAll is that the results
displayed by its search engine are ... well ... terse. For example, a
search for "Rainbow Six" results in 16 hits, but you can't tell which
hit is for the audio book, which is for the large print edition, or
which is the hard cover edition. In short, you have to hunt to find
what you are looking for.
The hunt, however, is worth it. When you finally find the book you are
looking for -- in this case, it is the 6th hit on the page -- AddAll
searches through 37 different online bookstores and then displays a page
telling you:
1. The name of each store that has the book you are looking for;
2. What shipping service each store will use to ship the book to
you (UPS ground, FedEX, snail mail, and so on);
3. How long it will take to receive the book from each bookstore;
4. How much the shipping will cost;
5. How much US sales tax you will have to pay (some states charge
their residents a sales tax on their online purchases; most do
not. If you are outside of the US, you can ignore this column);
6. The price of the book at each of the bookstores; and
7. The total price of the book (price plus shipping plus tax) at
each bookstore.
The price differentials are amazing. I can purchase Rainbow Six
online and have it delivered to me for anywhere between US$20.70 and
US$34.66. And the more expensive the book's cover price is, the bigger
the online price differential will be. [I recently ordered a copy of
Microsoft's TCP/IP Training manual, and it has a list price of $99.99.
Thanks to AddAll.com, I am having a copy delivered to me tomorrow for
only $62.75, and that includes shipping.]
AddAll also offers a free search engine for used an out of print books
at
http://www.addall.com/Used/index.html
http://www.addall.com/Used/index.html
While AddAll's used book search engine only searches through 10 online
bookstores, it is still a great tool for anyone who is on a budget
(especially college students).
I also want to give a special tip of the hat to the folks at AddAll.com
for recognizing that, at least here in the South, the phrases "AddAll"
and "AtAll" are homonyms. Fortunately, the folks at AddAll registered
both "AddAll.com" and "AtAll.com" as domain names. [So you can tell
your friends about this site over the phone and not have to worry about
your friends mishearing you and accidentally going to a whitehouse.com-
esque porn site.]
Anyway, if you read a lot -- and especially if the folks at the online
bookstores like Amazon.com know you and your credit card number by heart
-- you really owe it to yourself to check out AddAll.com. This site is
going save you a BUNCH of money!
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP(S):
AddAll
TODAY'S TOURBUS ADDRESSES:
http://www.addall.com/
http://www.addall.com/Used/index.html
---------------------------------
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORD OF THE WEEK
---------------------------------
BALKS (noun). A square container.
Usage: "Bubba ... get me a balks of matches!"
[Special thanks to an anonymous TOURBUS rider for today's wurd]
You can find all of the old Southern Words of the day at
http://netsquirrel.com/crispen/word.html
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(\__/) .' ) )) Patrick Douglas Crispen
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