Booksellers Bookplates State/Regional Bookseller Assoc. Maps & Cartographic History Jacksonville Florida & It's Beaches St. Augustine Florida

Sources for Books about books The Big Sites: Multi-dealer Venues. Bookbinding Book Supplys/Displays More More

• Wolf's Head Books in St. Augustine.
  
• Oak Knoll Books
  
• The Book Corner in Brandon, Fla.
• Steve Trussels Place

• Art of exlibris
  
• World of exlibris
  
• ex libris Web Ring
  
• Antioch Bookplate Co.
  

Primitive Pieces. Highly recommended map seller. Good people, good maps, good prices.

Mercator's World, the quarterly magazine.
Imago MundiThe International Journal for the History of Cartography
Map room at the British Library Need we say more?
Bodleian Library Map Room.

• TomFolio.com. Excellent interface with a "No Extra Fee" secure server for buyers. This is the most important new venue in quite a while. A rigorous set of bylaws and code of ethics protects the buyers as well as the reputation of the sellers. This is owned and operated by a cooperative of experienced booksellers who were united in a desire to create a venue not dependant upon or at the mercy of large corporations. The Tappin Book Mine is proud to be a chartering shareholder in A Booksellers Coop, the owner/operator of TomFolio.

• BookFinder.com, a fast, free search engine to help you find used, rare, and out of print books.by searching a variety of listing services. Results are NOT comprehensive lists. This site was acquired by Abebooks in 2005, so despite the excellent past track record achieved by former owner Anirvan Chatterjee, watch for the inevitable "corporatization".

• Advanced Book Exchange. ABE. Still the largest Used book venue in terms of number of listings. It usefullness has become heavily diluted by amateurs with little understanding of condition or edition, and with no apparent interest in learning. Caveat Emptor is the word. AT present, in addition to the monthly fee charged sellers, Abe takes 8% of the retail price. Look around before clicking on the BUY button there, as you may find the same book with the same seller for less money at another venue.

• Bibliofind. Defunct. Now just a gateway to Amazon.com. Purchased some years ago by Amazon, then folded into the Amazon marketplace/Zshop venue after the Bibliofind customer credit card database was exposed to undetected hackers for several months.

• Amazon used to do a pretty fair job of maintaining quality, and their corporate behavior seemed lightyears ahead of most big companys, but all good things seem to come to an end(in the globalized corporate world at least). Amazon now takes such a huge cut of independant booksellers sales, that few quality sellers can afford to ride the back of the whale. Despite Amazon's so called "fair price policy", those that can pay the tarriff tend to hike prices to cover the exorbitant fees and parsimonious shipping & handling reimbursement. In general, a wise buyer will look around before ordering at such places, as they often can get the same book from the same bookseller for less money by going to a less expence venue, Such as Tomfolio.com.

• Biblio.com Dispite the occasional confustion with the long lost Bibliofind, Biblio has make strong inroads into seller/subscribers at Abe & Alibris, and possiblly to a lesser degree at Amazon. Buyers follow selection, just as sellers follow sales, but if sales cease to be profitable, all the buyer's in the world don't mean a thing. All of the sites try very hard to be BUYER FRIENDLY, and most succeed, or else fail quickly. Biblio seems to place equal weight on being SELLER FRIENDLY, in the sence that they offer a very reasonable fee structure, and an incredible array of seller tools without the usual "nickel & dime 'em to death" approach. As long as it can maintain this attractive seller package, and GROW the buyer base, I expect them to grow & prosper.

• Alibris. A book broker that replaced the venerable Interloc.

  Sales seem to be decline (circ 2006) since Amazon booted them off Amazon's Marketplace in a move to steer sellers into setting up direct with Amazon and pay those Amazon-sized fees.

• Barnes & Noble. Used books? Well, they act as markup brokers for some ABE subscribers. If you have an affinity for dealing with corporate America, this may be the way to go. They are now taking 10% of the sellers asking price, as well as the markup, so you should expect some sellers to raise their prices on the venue to offset the extra cost.

• Half.com Now owned by Ebay, but no improvement here. The few times I've purchased from them have been either unsuccessful (we never got the book), or disasters of duplicated orders or grossly misrepresented books. Their survival is a testamony to the power of marketing.