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Online Bookstore Article
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Have Online Book Stores Changed The Book World Forever?
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Remember the days when going to the book store meant taking a leisurely stroll through the rows with the smell of newly-bound books in the air? But what about those people who don't live within ten, fifteen or even twenty minutes of a book store? What about those people who don't want to deal with the occasionally-rude staff or the irritating lines at the counter? There's more than one reason online book stores have changed the book w...
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Top Rated Online Bookstore
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Amazon
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We couldn't do online bookstore reviews and not check out Amazon Books! They truly have their stuff together and it’s obvious in their user-friendly, fun-to-browse website interface. Amazon lets you search for books in their online bookstore by category, title, author, keyword, bestsellers and more.
Customers can even break down their search results further by relevance, price, publication date or first letter. Talk about detailed! We feel Amazon Books offers the most seasoned book lover or even casual readers a fun, versatile book-buying experience. You can even snag yourself a new TV or toolset while you’re at it.
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Books Blowout Store-
Save up to 80% on all kinds of titles like former bestsellers or popular overstock books.
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Just In! New Book Shipments-Always stay up to date with the newest releases.
Star Reviews was hooked once we landed on the Amazon Books website. They clearly boasted the largest inventory of books we've seen, and at discount prices! Their prices were comparable to, but lower than their competitors' pricing in most instances. Don't see that brand new book you've been dying to read? Amazon will let you pre-order it. Customer support by telephone and email are both great, and there's an extensive Help database as well. They surely earned themselves our Top Rated spot with 6.0 Stars!
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Most Popular Online Bookstore
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Barnes & Noble
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Star Reviews notes that the Barnes & Noble website is simple to navigate. They offer your typical online bookstore search functions. Unfortunately, the search feature isn’t fool-proof. When searching for “Saint Bernard,” the top result was a dog book about the breed, but The Little Price was second because “Bernard” was the editor’s surname and What Paul Meant by Garry Wills was the third option because the book discusses saints. This could be a beneficial feature for those that can't necessarily pinpoint the exact title they're looking for.
Star Reviews really liked that when you look at the details for each book, you’ll find a customer rating, comments from critics if available, a summary of the book’s plot, as well as the price of the book for consumers and for members. Barnes and Noble is very thorough and efficient!
- Biographies of and interviews with best selling authors.
- A growing selection of items, including video games and toys.
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Gift reminder service,
so you won’t forget to purchase presents for the people in your life.
- For $25 per year, you can join the program and save 40% on all hardcover bestsellers, 20% on all other hardcover books, and 10% on everything else.
Barnes and Noble is a staple in most of your local communities, as well as online. Star Reviews awards them the Most Popular spot with 5.5 Stars! This site is very user friendly with an enormous selection. With the member discounts, we were able to snag our book up at a very good price. Customer support is offered live and we received our answers within minutes of our call.
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Online Bookstore Reviews
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Abe Books’ search interface is straightforward and makes narrowing down your book results very easy. On the main page, you can search by the typical search functions: author, title, keyword, or ISBN. During our navigation, we found Abe Books' website to be very bland compared to their competitors' graphic designs.
Good thing we didn't "judge a book by its cover!" This online bookstore is packed with books - over 100 million books from 13,000 independent book sellers! As we narrowed our search down, we were able to learn more about the individual titles and their condition, plus details about the bookseller and their terms.
Because the booksellers set their own terms, you need to review all of the information carefully before placing an order. Even though your purchases will be made through separate booksellers, all of your items will be combined in a single order for added convenience.
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Three newsletters you can subscribe to – one for collectors, readers, and book club members.
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Giftsleuth – a forum where users ask one another for gift suggestions.
All in All, Abe Books' is a relatively large online bookstore. They proved to be very effective finding all our hard-to-find books, not to mention popular new releases. Even though the site is a little plain, it is very easy to navigate. We were a little let down with their customer support - Only email and online help for book buyers. During our price comparison, Abe Books beat everyone elses price by a long shot. Star Reviews gives them 5.5 Stars!
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The Borders website uses Amazon.com’s layout and interface, so finding what you want is simple if you are accustomed to Amazon like we are. The best part about this partnership is if you are an Amazon user, you won’t have to open a separate account; you just use your existing Amazon.com account to complete your order.
When we entered our search criteria, a large list of possible titles were generated, and we could sort these further by relevance, customer reviews, price, bestselling, publication date, and alphabetically. When you pick a title to look at further, you’ll clearly see the price, product details (length, publisher, book description, and more), and customer rating. Who are we kidding...when you're partnered with Amazon, very little is left overlooked.
- Borders has partnered with Amazon.com to handle all online orders
- Book listings available in Spanish, as well as in English
Customer support was impeccable, answering our phone call immediately. Our questions weren't out of this world, since we are so familiar with navigating Amazon. Border's selection and effectivness cannot be beat now that it's backed by Amazon. With little to nothing negative to say at all, Star Reviews awards Borders the Top Rated position with 5.5 Stars!
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The Powell’s Book's website is very easy on the eyes, boasting a well-put-together interface.
We really appreciated the significant amount of information Powell's provides, including the ability to browse the table of contents, price comparisons for the book in different formats, reader comments, publication date, and more. You’ll also be advised where the book or similar titles can be found in the actual Powell's store, which might be helpful if you’re near one of their Oregon bookstores.
- Now accepts payment through Paypal.
- Blogs written about books, authors, and other related topics.
- A chance to win $250 in books just for signing up for Powell’s newsletter.
- Powell’s has managed to snag exclusive interviews with some of the top authors in the industry, including Martin Amis, Frank McCourt, and Stephen King.
Powell's Books offers the same selection as larger bookstore competitors, plus the ability to search for rare, hard-to-find books. With a clean site layout, we were able to zip through the content, locating everything we needed, including customer support. While their email responses are slightly standardized, we had a clear, knoweledgeable response by phone. We were very pleased with all aspects of Powell's, except for their higher prices. This brought their rating down to 5.0 Stars.
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As we began our review, we thought the Books-A-Million website was fairly easy to navigate when using the search box at the top of the page. Other than that, we did not find this site as user friendly as some of the rest, and it had a less-than-appealing site design.
Once your results appear, the most recent release matching your search criteria can be found at the top of the page. After you click it, you’ll see some basic information, including the number of pages, the release date, customers’ ratings, as well as the price for users and the reduced price for club members. As far as book information goes...Books-A-Million did a good job at covering these features. Star Reviews stumbled upon a really cool feature - Books-A-Million’s Personal Shopper Service. You can receive gift recommendations for anyone by simply sending an email with a few details about the person and your price range for the gift. Then, you'll receive an email back including great gift ideas for your loved ones!
- Books-A-Million now has a bargain books section for finding cool books at low prices.
- Millionaire’s Club Discount Card which saves users an extra 10% off purchases for a year – joining the club costs $15 annually.
Star Reviews was disappointed with Books-A-Million's selection. We didn't find CD’s or DVD’s and our book results did provide the large selection that others did. Their prices are competitive if you are a club member. We thought customer service could use some work considering we received two different answers (email and phone) for the same question. Star Reviews sums up our experience by giving Books-A-Million 4.5 Stars.
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