Personal Growth / Mind / Books

Books


From specialty bookshops to major publishing houses, we found the Web to be the ultimate full-service bookstore. Search services will notify when they've found your rare title, even reporting on the tome's physical condition. Wherever your hard-to-find book is, from New York to London to somewhere in Australia, you can acquire it on the Web and have it delivered to your door. We found all manner of databases that you can search by author, publisher, ISBN, genre, or keywords. Perhaps best of all, some of the largest sites claim catalogs containing in the neighborhood of a million instantly identifiable and available titles. We found book reviews, opportunities to chat with authors and learn about their current publicity tours, and resources to help you maximize your appreciation of the printed word. We also found downloadable e-books and sites that let you order custom-made children's books. For now, though, remember to use caution when sending credit card numbers across the Web.

The Best

The Internet Book Shop claims to be the world's largest on-line bookstore. Though the claim is false, at 750,000 titles you won't notice much difference. What you will notice is IBS' exceptional search capabilities. You can search the authoritative Books in Print, catalogs of individual publishers, or book listings by subject. Searches can be based upon title, author, publisher, ISBN, or up to three keywords. IBS also lists specialty bookstores where you can find personalized attention, featured books and authors, a mailing list, and hotlinks to a range of British book publishers. To its credit, IBS also provides a thoughtful on-line help function to help you navigate through this site.

If quantity of holdings is paramount in your choice of site, perhaps because you're searching for that truly esoteric book, take a look at Amazon.com Books , which leads the pack with a claimed million titles. Its search engine, like IBS', is notable: easy to use yet sophisticated. You can search by author, title, subject, and keyword. You'll enjoy browsing the highlighted books that change daily, the 30% discount off publishers' list prices for bestsellers, and overall good prices. Can't find the book you want? You can ask an automated agent or a live staff member to notify you when it has been located or becomes available. Cool stuff! And if you're curious about a particular title, customer reviews are available.

Sometimes the best way to find just the right book is by first selecting the right publisher. For a task like this, Publishers' Catalogs Home Page is the hands-down winner, with catalogs from thousands of publishers worldwide, including 300 from the U.S. alone.

Arguably the most interesting site put up by a specific publisher is the digital home of computer book publisher John Wiley & Sons. Here, you'll of course find a searchable catalog and corporate details. But you'll also find on-line newsletters and FTP archives that include book excerpts and software found in Wiley's book-disk titles. Oddly, you'll also find an interactive calculus forum, complete with a message base, news, and resources.

It probably isn't surprising that computer publishers have taken the lead in creating the best Web sites. The Macmillan Bookstore offers listings of its more than 11,000 computer-related books, with tables of contents, sample chapters, and cover shots. You can search by title, subject, author, or ISBN. You can receive pointers to your nearest bookstores carrying Macmillan titles, or order on-line. Discounts and other offers round out the attractiveness of this site.

BookWeb! is a great place to call your home on the Web when looking for almost anything related to books. Run by the American Booksellers Association, you learn about radio, television, and print appearances of your favorite authors as well as their tour schedules. Articles and columns provide useful insights into bookdom, and you can search for bookstore home pages through a directory of about 75 by specialty or location. If you're a puzzles fan, the site's monthly on-line puzzles can be great fun. Solve the current puzzle and you may win a $50 gift certificate toward book purchases. Or if you've fantasized about owning your own bookstore, you'll find a variety of interesting information and statistics. Lastly, you'll find a thoughtful range of on-line links, from the Library of Congress to on-line newspapers. Expanded lists and links and on-line chats with noted authors are in the works.

With 320,000 titles you can search and order on-line, and its links to other book sites on the Internet, Book Stacks Unlimited is already a cut above most book-related Web sites. But what sets it apart are some unique extras. In particular, this is a great place to start if you're interested in the mushrooming number of on-line e-book sites, with thousands of copyright titles ready for downloading. You'll also find a book-discussion forum and help finding your favorite author on the Internet. Browsable Usenet collections round out the site's features. Check this one out!

If you're among those who want what you want fast, Dial-A-Book is for you. Browse ASCII tables of contents and first chapters on-line, order the title you want via phone or on-line form, then download it in Adobe Acrobat 2.0.PDF format. You'll find recently released titles and selections from well-known university and commercial publishers. Instant gratification is what Dial-A-Book is all about.

The Web contains URLs for countless university presses. But the best place to begin your search for books from such publishers is the Association of American University Presses. You can search this clearinghouse for U.S. college presses by individual or combined holdings catalogs and by virtually any criteria you desire, including full-text searches of descriptions. This site offers access to tables of contents and first chapters of many titles, links to related sites, and on-line ordering.

When it's your child's turn to explore books on the Web, you have ample options. But your best bet is to begin by setting your browser to the Children's Literature Web Guide. You'll see conferences and events, awards listings, and recommended books and dozens of lists of booksellers. You'll also find on-line stories, resources about children's books and their authors, discussion groups, and book reviews. The choices continue with a variety of resources for parents, teachers, storytellers, writers, and illustrators. Look also for research guides and indices as well as links to children's publishers and booksellers on the Internet. And don't overlook the on-line writings by children.

The rec.arts.books FAQ is a good resource to remember. It answers 250 questions and offers discussions of specific genre of books as well as lists of booksellers around the world broken down by geographic location. Don't miss the resources section. We particularly enjoyed information about libraries and their telnet sites. Learn how to telnet into a library around the block or around the world while wearing your bunny slippers.

The Rest

If you prefer someone else to do the legwork of browsing catalogs, the place for you is BookFinders. Its raison d'être is to scour U.S., Canadian, and British sources for hard-to-find books and report its findings, including price and condition. You pay nothing unless you decide to buy.

If you're a serious aficionado of antiquarian, first-edition, or collectible books in almost any genre, the Virtual Book Shop offers a great search engine and database. Search by author, title, subject, or phrases within book descriptions. If you still don't find what you want, the bookstore's staff will attempt to locate the book and inform you by e-mail.

Another of the best sites for antiquarian as well as out-of-print and some new and remaindered titles is Virtual Moe's. To conjure a sense of a virtual bookstore, the site first takes you on a virtual elevator to move between virtual floors that contain various categories of books, though this concept requires more of your imagination than it might: The implementation would have been more effective if it had been graphical rather than textual. Still, the concept helps you visualize where you are in the virtual store at any particular moment.

The Web contains a growing number of book-related sites offering a Christian perspective. Though none of them yet achieves the quality of the best sites we saw, the Christian Warehouse has more charms than most of its direct alternatives. You'll find modest listings of best-selling Christian books and music. What sets it apart from similar sites, though, are the downloadable pages from its printed catalog, which it makes available in Adobe Acrobat.PDF format. Look for the page of pointers to other "cool Christian links."

Powell's Technical Books is hard to beat for finding virtually any genre of technical books, from computers to construction and electronics to medical science. Its search engine is exceptional. Search by title or keyword, author, subject, and publisher, and view output conveniently sorted by several criteria. Any search can span all titles or be limited to used books, books on sale, or used books on sale.

If science fiction and fantasy are your pleasure, you're probably already familiar with the traditional Change of Hobbit and The Other Change of Hobbit bookstores. So you'll delight to hear that the "Other" in Berkeley now has a Web presence. You can browse and order on-line, and explore science-fiction and fantasy film reviews. The staff heartily encourages questions.

Baby Boomers and other latter-day members of the beat or hip generations who...like wow, man...still want to dig it but live far away from that bastion of cool, the City Lights Bookstore in San Francisco, shouldn't despair. In a decidedly unadorned site befitting its image, you can browse the store's entire catalog in ASCII, manual-search mode. Be there or be square.

Meanwhile, The Space Between is the refuge for those intrigued by conspiracy theories, UFOs, fringe science, and such. Here you can search, order, find links to like-minded groups and other resources, and join related mailing lists.

Nolo Press has long been recognized as the leading source for do-it-yourself legal help. Its books and software support common legal issues including wills, small claims court, divorce, and debts. Nolo plans to augment its line of traditional books in late 1995 by offering e-books on the Web. It also provides articles, and you can download court and legislative action to augment and update Nolo's books and software. And to be perfectly PC these days, check out the site's collections of lawyer jokes and quotes.

It's always tough to find a publisher more resourceful than the popular trade books company, Bantam Doubleday Dell. Though heavily under construction at press time, the site has an interesting design and reveals much excitement in the works. You'll see an on-line catalog, a visit with a guest author, and a daily horoscope or puzzle. Other areas here focus on young readers and on author tours and appearances.

Another promising site is that of small self-publisher Sapphire Press. You'll find the company's UNCAT project here, a searchable catalog of otherwise-uncataloged titles of books, reports, pamphlets, newsletters, CD-ROMs, and audio and video cassettes generally not found in bookstores and libraries. Authors and publishers include businesses, nonprofits, governmental agencies, self-published individuals, and museums.

by J. W. Olsen

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Copyright (c) 1995 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. Internet Life and the Internet Life logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company.

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Internet Life Vol.1 No.1 Winter 1995