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Comment by abnercoimbre

5 days ago

It’s funny: a loved one gifted me a book knowing I’m opposed to Amazon’s practices. They let me know they bought it elsewhere and the act of paying more was part of the gift’s charm (they’ll use Amazon otherwise.)

I've found that books of all things are usually something you can get for Amazon prices elsewhere.

  • You can buy used books, they sell extremely cheap and are perfectly readable. There is a lot of seller, at least in France, but I guess it must be similar in usa.

    • Used books in France appear extremely cheap because new ones can't be discounted. By law (I think) retailers only allowed to offer a maximum 5% off.

      Used books are exempt from the law entirely, so they're priced by pure market forces.

      In countries like the US or UK, a recently-published book might already be 40% off list price, so used copies may not be as much of a bargain.

  • I just Google the book name followed by the word epub and generally find what I'm looking for pretty quickly.