Cheap place for books - or wait?

[AndyWB]

I got given some money for books at Christmas, and I'd had my eyes on Sissy Haas' "Double Stars for Small Telescopes" - but now nowhere in the UK seems to have a copy, or they're going for £50 (!) on Amazon.

Is there a post-Christmas shortage of such books (and associated price spike)? Or somewhere a bit cheaper? I balk at spending that much on a book that's about $25.

There seems to be a similar thing with the Cambridge Double star atlas. I can only find it available for £2000, but that's a bit steep too...

[pete_l]

Why can't you buy from the US?

Just putting your search term into Google showed the book in stock at 2 major american astro retailers. Both were charging $29.95 + P&P

[swag72]

Have a look on the Book Depository or Abe Books - The latter are second hand, but the few books I've bought from there have been as new.

[emadmoussa]

Wouldn't this do the job? It's a pretty good book...

[madsarmy]

Got to agree with you swag72.

Book Depository or Abe Books. Have been using these two companies for a few years now with no problems.

[AndyWB]

I did look at Book Depository and Abe Books, but they didn't seems to have it in stock, and yup, they've been good in the past too.

I did wonder about ordering from the States but the postage seems to be as much as the book!

Ronin has put me onto somewhere that has it at a sensible price, but I'm still curious as several books I'd been looking at seem to have suddenly become hard to find/expensive to get, and I wondered if this was a common yearly phenomena or something?

[wookie1965]

Th book people are very good as well i have bought a couple of books from them the last Mark Thompson,The Down To Earth Guide To The Cosmos for £3.99

[frugal]

It does seem that when books goes out of print, or are in short supply, the booksellers crank up the prices to crazy levels. My wife was looking at some historical fashion books and they had gone up from £30 to £500 just because they were out of print. I guess someone must be willing to pay those prices or they would not raise them up as high.