Search and Find the Best Second Hand Book Price Online

(millions of used books worldwide) 

If you’ve not found what you are looking for, then try our sister site, www.usedbooksearch.net

Used Book Search – Quick & Reliable World Book Price Comparison

usedbooksearch.co.uk is a meta search engine for finding used books, textbooks, antiquarian, rare/valuable and out of print books . Search, find and buy second hand books online from hundreds of bookstores worldwide. Our used book search engine is linked to thousands of online booksellers via a small number of book marketplaces, such as Abebooks, Amazon Marketplace and Alibris.

buy used books online

usedbooksearch.co.uk consolidates information


In order to get you the best possible price for second hand books online, usedbooksearch.co.uk aggregates/consolidates information about the top used book marketplaces.
(This means that we do not sell books directly)

Go straight to those sites that have your used book for sale by filling in the above form and clicking on the ‘Search’ button.

More Information on Buying Used Books Online

Search Tips

  • Enter a single word (or part word) in any or all of the search boxes.
  • Try not to use specialist characters like ‘&’ or ‘*’ or ‘?’ which may have unexpected results.
  • Click on ‘Search’ when ready for a price comparison.
  • When you see the price you like or the used book site you prefer click on it to transfer to this vender site for the option to buy.
  • The default is for bookshops worldwide though you can always toggle to USA or UK after the search. Alternatively, to search from stores in a particular country, you can select from the country flag in the top right corner.
second hand books

Buying Used Books Online

When buying books online you have the product at your fingertips instead of getting in the car or on the bus and making the trek to the brick and mortar store. Buying second hand books online can be less expensive and it makes comparison-shopping much easier.

Given the choice of buying a used book for one dollar/pound/euro or twenty without any difference in quality….. which one are you going to go for?
Would you spend hours at your local used book store to find they have not got what you need on the shelf anyway?

Are you worried about buying second hand books online because you cannot physically touch the books?

it's ok!

  • Books sold online usually have a categorisation and/or a detailed descriptions of their condition
  • Online Book Sellers have peace-of-mind Returns Policies that you can read beforehand
  • If you buy from Amazon, Alibris or Ebay, you can read customer reviews. Abebooks and Biblio's star ratings are based on order completion rates
For more information on how a book’s condition is categorised on on each book store, what returns policies they have, and how online store’s individual ratings are calculated, please read on…

Online Second Hand Book Shops - More Information

Abebooks

AbeBooks is a popular online marketplace that connects buyers with independent booksellers worldwide. A reliable network of book shops from around the world can list their stock, and it therefore has an extensive selection of new, used, and rare books.

i. Book Condition Categorisation

When buying used books from AbeBooks, it’s crucial to pay attention to the book condition descriptions provided by the sellers. Standardised condition terms like “New,” “Used – Very Good,” “Used – Good,” “Used – Acceptable,” etc., are used by sellers to indicate the condition of the book
abebooks book store

Abebooks has a page, where they explain the various Book Condition terms:

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/books/rarebooks/collecting-guide/understanding-rare-books/guide-book-conditions.shtml

“Fine” and “As New” books should have no defects (although, Fine books do not have the ‘crisp’ feel that new books do)

Top Tip

For any of the terms below Fine (Very Good, Good, Fair or Poor), Abebooks states that “Any defects should be noted by the seller” – so, particularly in these cases, one should read the book description carefully, in order to understand any defects that a used book may have.

ii. Book Seller Ratings

Each seller on AbeBooks has a rating based on order completion rates. “The rating represents the percentage of orders that have been successfully completed by an individual bookseller in the previous six months.” Note that in the case of Abebooks, this has nothing to do with customer feedback. The good thing, however, about Abebooks, is that each Seller’s Rating is clearly visible with a 1-5 star icon, on the book search listing page:
abebooks seller ratings

iii. Delivery Time

Many of the sellers on Abebooks make their dispatch policy clearly visible in the short description, on the search results page. For example, they may state “Dispatched, from the UK, within 48 hours of ordering” If this is not the case, then simply click on the Book Seller, and Shipping Information should be found on the Book Seller’s information page.

iv. Delivery Price

The Shipping Price is clearly listed on the book search results page of Abebooks:
Many sellers on Abebooks include free delivery – in which case, this is also clearly stated. Make sure that you also pay attention to the location of the bookseller. If you want a book to be delivered quickly, then make sure that you order from a seller located in the same country as where you want the book delivered to.

v. Return Policies

Each bookseller on AbeBooks sets their own return policies. Before making a purchase, it’s important to review the seller’s return policy to understand the options available in case you’re not satisfied with your purchase or if the book arrives in a different condition than described.

vi. Payment Options

AbeBooks provides secure payment options for buyers. You can typically pay using major credit cards, debit cards, or PayPal, depending on the seller’s payment preferences.

Amazon

Amazon is a big household name, and many users will be familiar will be buying from Amazon. Since launching in 1994, the company has grown to become a huge online marketplace that offers a vast range of products, including books. Amazon is a website that can conjure up strong emotions – it’s a site that you either love or hate, and there won’t be much that we can do to change that. We can, however, provide some extra details on the process of buying books on Amazon… read on!

i. Book Condition Categorisation

It is possible to filter the condition of an individual second-hand book on Amazon. To do this, you will need to click on the following text on an individual product page:
amazon used book prices
then it will give you more information about the condition of the book sold by each seller:
amazon used book conditions
It also gives you the option to filter by condition. Just click on the ‘Filter’ dropdown:
amazon used book condition filter

 

ii. Book Seller Ratings

 

Remember, that unless it says Sold by: Amazon Media EU, Amazon is just acting as a marketplace for other sellers.

You therefore need to pay close attention to the information regarding these 3rd party sellers.

Click on the store link to go to the store page that stocks your book, and have a look at the Customer Feedback

amazon book seller ratings
To get a balanced overview of a book seller, it is sometimes good to click on the different star ratings to get the good, the bad and the ugly – perhaps you can forgive them for the complaints that a few 2-star reviewers gave them… or perhaps not!

iii. Delivery

The Delivery time and price can be found by again, clicking on the used book price link:

At this point, if you click on the Filter dropdown, you are able to Filter by sellers that include ‘Free Delivery’

If you find yourself regularly opting to buy books from Amazon, then it may be worth considering Amazon Prime.

And given that Amazon offers a 30 day free trial, there’s nothing to lose in trying it out anyway!

Sign Up to Amazon Prime Free Trial

Amazon Prime offers:

“Unlimited One-Day Delivery on millions of items in the UK and Same Day Delivery in select areas” You can filter by books that are delivered with free one-day delivery, via Amazon Prime:
amazon prime books

And, as an extra bonus for readers:

“Prime Reading lets you enjoy unlimited reading on any device, with over a thousand books, magazines, comics and articles.”
“Amazon First Reads allows you to choose one Kindle book of the six Editors’ Picks each month for no additional cost.”

We don’t want you to completely replace much-loved physical used books with e-books. However, for some incorporating both physical and e-books in to our lives (especially when travelling), can be a nice option.

Find out more about Prime Reading

 

iv. Amazon Returns

 

Amazon provides extensive information about it’s returns policies here:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/b?ie=UTF8&node=20772621031

Most used books are bought from Amazon marketplace, rather than Amazon itself.

In which case, they will have their own returns policies. Amazon does state, however, that “The returns policy offered by Marketplace sellers must be equivalent to or better than the returns policy offered by Amazon.co.uk.”
For more information, you can read this page:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=GV38326YW5JX9V9X

 

v. Payment Options on Amazon

 

In addition to all of the standard payment methods, such as Debit Card and Paypal, you also have the option of paying by Amazon Gift Cards and Amazon Pay Balance.

Alibris

Just like Abebooks, Alibris is an online book marketplace where book sellers can list their books. This gives the bookshops access to a large audience, and it gives you book buyers a huge marketplace – win-win!

i. Book Condition Categorisation

The condition of books on Alibris are written in the descriptions of the books, and so you cannot filter by book condition, like you can on Amazon. The up-side, however, is that the description is often elaborated on – so, for example, you will have “Very Good: a copy that has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. “, rather than just “very good” – so you get to see a better description of the condition, which could otherwise be a slightly subjective categorisation. Alibris has a very useful grading terms list here, which is particularly important for more valuable books:
https://www.alibris.co.uk/article/021114/book-condition-grading/determining-conditions

ii. Delivery

Unlike Abebooks and Amazon Marketplace, the delivery prices for books on Alibris are set. Currently it costs £2.99 for the first item, and then an extra £2.19 for each additional item. And the delivery time is a rather large range of 3-14 days. However, if you click on an individual Book Seller page, you will often find more specific information on delivery times.

iii. Returns

Alibris has a 60 days returns policy that is via Alibris, rather than the 3rd party booksellers. This seems to be a main plus point in favour of buying from Alibris: https://www.alibris.co.uk/policies/returns

Ebay

Ebay is another household name. A marketplace, where items are sold either by an auction or a ‘Buy it Now’ pricing method. Books sold on eBay tend to be sold by the ‘Buy it Now’ method, which has the advantage of one knowing straight away what the fixed price is.

i. Book Condition Categorisation

On Ebay we are easily and quickly able to filter search results by the condition of the book:
ebay used book conditions

The filtering system here is easier than on Amazon, and isn’t possible on Abebooks or Alibris.

ii. Book Seller Ratings

Each user on Ebay has a Feedback score, solely based on prior customer feedback.

Be sure to bear in mind how many users the feedback score is based on. 100% positive feedback from 1000s of people obviously holds more value than when based on just 5 people.

You can be confident with sellers that have a feedback score of 100% from 100s or 1000s of users.

iii. Delivery

Many of the sellers on Ebay include Free Delivery and this is a major advantage of buying from here. This will be displayed on the search results page, and sometimes you will also see the delivery time displayed on the search results page as well:
used books ebay delivery
If the delivery time isn’t displayed on the search results page, then you can see it by clicking through to the individual item’s page:
used books ebay

iv. Returns

Returns policies are also found on individual item’s pages. For example, the following may be displayed:
ebay book returns

If you then click on ‘See details’ you will see more details about the returns policy, including whether or not the item is covered by Ebay’s ‘Money Back Guarantee’ policy:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/help/policies/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy/ebay-money-back-guarantee-policy?id=4210

Biblio

Biblio is another second-hand book marketplace. It is targeted at book collectors and is an excellent place to go to for rare and collectible books.

i. Book Conditions

Biblio’s condition classification is a little different to the other sites. They use “As New (AN)”, “Fine (F)”, “Good (G)”, “Fair” and “Poor”

Biblio has a detailed explanation of their Book Condition Classifications here:

https://biblio.co.uk/book-collecting/basics/how-to-read-bookseller-descriptions/

Don’t forget that it is the individual book sellers that are assigning these classifications.
In the case of more expensive, rare books, it would be worth ‘asking the seller a question’ to get more details, before committing to a purchase.

ii. Book Seller Ratings

The ratings on Biblio are based on ‘order fulfilment rates’ for the previous 90 days, rather than customer reviews. “Order fulfillment is the percentage of orders placed with that seller which were filled.”

This is unlike the other sites, where user ratings are incorporated into the star system.

iii. Delivery

The delivery costs are clearly displayed underneath the book price on the search results pages of Biblio:

biblio used books delivery
And a nice little function on Biblio is the ability to order your search results by ‘lowest total with shipping”:
biblio used books

The delivery time is displayed once on the checkout page, and you can opt to pay more for expediated shipping.

Returns:

Biblio offers a 30-day money back guarantee for peace of mind:

https://biblio.co.uk/pages/order_guarantee.html

Additionally, each individual book seller will have their own, varying terms, within this.
For example, booksellers will accept returns from customers who placed an order incorrectly, but others won’t. You will need to check the individual book seller page for their unique terms.

Blackwell's

Blackwell’s is an online book store (it also has physical shops) that sells new books.
Their prices include delivery.

Their books are normally dispatched within 7 days, and then their delivery time is 2-4 days after dispatch.

They have a very simple, no-questions-asked returns policy.

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Used Book Search