I’m a big fan of technical bookstores.
We used to have one in Tyson’s Corner, but it closed up shop. Luckily, in Washington D.C. there still is Reiters. What makes these places great is the ability to walk in, handle the books, and do an enormously painful amount of impulse buying.
At the moment, the closest thing I have to that is Borders, because many of the other chains, with perhaps the exception of Barnes and Noble (which is often more expensive than Borders), contain a very diluted technical book section.
Last night my wife was running past Borders, and I gave her a list of 35 books that were on my wish list. Borders had most of them in stock. However, when I included the title and ISBN, I also included the Amazon price, quite by accident. My wife, a thrifty shopper, noted that Borders was considerably more expensive and fired me back an email to ask if I was sure I wanted them. After all, with Amazon, you get free shipping.
I was convinced they couldn’t be that much more expensive, so she took the first dozen or so books on my list, looked them up, and sent me back the prices. I was shocked. Truly shocked.
Using a simple Perl script, I built this little comparison table.
| Book | Borders | Amazon | Discount |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Ruby Way | $ 39.99 | $ 26.39 | 34% |
| Write Great Code | $ 44.95 | $ 29.67 | 34% |
| Modern C++ Design | $ 54.99 | $ 38.49 | 30% |
| Generic Programming and the STL | $ 59.99 | $ 41.99 | 30% |
| Generic Programming | $ 50.00 | $ 50.00 | 0% |
| Beyond the C++ Standard Library | $ 49.99 | $ 34.99 | 30% |
| C++ Template Metaprogramming | $ 44.99 | $ 31.49 | 30% |
| C++ Templates | $ 65.99 | $ 46.85 | 29% |
| Maximum Boost | $ 34.95 | $ 23.07 | 34% |
| The Boost Graph Library User Guide | $ 44.95 | $ 31.49 | 30% |
| Head First ObjectOriented Analysis and Design | $ 34.99 | $ 32.99 | 6% |
| CSS Mastery: Advanced Web Standards Solutions | $ 34.99 | $ 23.09 | 34% |
| Sneaky Uses for Everyday Things | $ 10.95 | $ 8.76 | 20% |
I can not believe it’s that much cheaper to order books online. 30% savings is worth the lack of instant gratification.
Here’s the big problem though. The reason my favorite technical bookstore in Tyson’s closed was because they sold the same products as other bookstores in the area at a higher price. You went in for the massive selection, purchased the unique stuff, but walked out with a list of books you could obtain cheaper elsewhere. Enough people followed this practice, and the store closed up and went online. But the appeal of browsing and instant gratification were gone. Meanwhile the selection of technical books at regular bookstores became mediocre. I feel history is about to repeat itself.
I got to hand it to Amazon, though, the ability to browse a book online has totally changed my opinion of online bookstores. As for the instant gratification, though – I guess I can live with near-instant.
Funny thing though, if Borders instituted a “we’ll match Amazon” policy, they’d steal my business back. I take computer science very seriously. Checking my book purchasing record trends, it appears I spend about two grand on books a year. Yikes!
Don’t know if you’ve had a chance to take a look at it yet, but o’Reilly has Safari online. They have most of their own books along with some Sams, New Riders, and others. It gives you a chance to page through some of the books and see if the information in them is worth buy them from anywhere.
–Dave