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I love books. Unfortunately, in Australia the selection of books in local book stores are limited and usually they’re quite expensive.

Here are a few tips I’ve picked up for getting books.

Subscribe to Borders Shortlist and Dymocks Booklover

Borders Shortlist and Dymocks Booklover are email newsletters for their respective stores. Each newsletter features new and popular books they are trying to sell, as you would expect, but they also contain great discount vouchers, offers and sales announcements. 20% off and 30% off vouchers come up every now and then in Shortlist. Booklover announces big discount sales and competitions. I usually hold back on book purchases until I get one of the vouchers. They are often the cheapest way of buying books.

Order Online

If you don’t mind waiting for delivery, ordering books online can be the best choice. Online stores have a much better selection than your local book store and are usually cheaper. To make the most of purchasing online you should group your book purchases so you can spread the hit of the shipping cost.

Amazon is probably the first name that comes to mind when you think about online book stores, but there are quite a few options now, including some Australian based ones. Book Depository is a UK based online store that seems to be the growing favourite now, with its free worldwide shipping. In Australia, my favourite is Booktopia with its discount prices and $6.50 flat fee for shipping. The tradition bricks and mortar stores like Borders and Dymocks have moved online too.

Borrow from the Library

If you just want to grab a book to read, you can’t beat not having to spend any money. The library is probably the best option for one-off reads like novels, biographies and magazines. The downsides are the selections will be limited to what’s popular with the general library users and you’ll have to compete for the available copies.

E-books

With the arrival of the Amazon Kindle, Apple iPad and a handful of other dedicated e-readers and tablet devices, people should start to seriously consider the e-book option. E-book prices, from what I have seen, vary a lot depending on the seller and the format, but should always be cheaper than buying paper books. Personally I’m still holding off from buying my first e-book until Apple brings the iBook Store to Australia. If I were to buy an e-book now, I would buy in PDF or ePub format as they are open formats that are well supported by current devices.

That’s all I have on the subject. Do you have any other suggestions for getting books?