Recently I ordered my first set of books (after almost 2 1/2 – 3 years) online from Flipkart.com. I used to order a lot of books online but then stopped because shipping to India is very expensive on most Online book stores. e.g. Amazon charges about $5 per book and it doesn’t seem to matter how many books you order you still have to pay $5 per book. Though a friend told me that if you order about 10-15 books then the price of shipping does go down. *shrug*
FlipKart is a Bangalore based company that allows you to order international editions of books at a reasonable price and ships it to anywhere in India. So I ordered my first set of 4 books. The ordering was painless and pretty quick, though the site search engine does leave a lot to be desired. It seems like it can only do an OR search so its hard to locate books with common words in the title. Other than that the site is pretty easy to use.
Today at 11 am I got an email that 3 out of the 4 books I ordered have been shipped to me and the 4th one was being processed. At 1:10 pm I had the books in hand. I was amazed. Plus the books are in great condition and arrived safely.
The books ordered internationally (i.e. books that are not available for sale in India) take about 14-21 days to ship, but mine arrived 18 days. Once I get the last book I will be ordering my next set of books. 🙂
I am pretty happy that I found this store, though my bank balance is not going to be that happy with me. 😉
If you want to buy books that are not available for sale in India, check out their site.
– Suramya
Hi suramya…
Just wanted to add one more site to your list….
A1Books India is a US based online bookstore from where I have purchased some really rare titles as well as sold my old used books….just in case you ever want to check out their service, go to http://www.a1books.co.in.
For me, it has been a good experience…..I got my book delivered within the period mentioned and also got the right price for my unused books….
Best wishes to you…
Regards
Anamika Joshi
Comment by Anamika Joshi — December 3, 2009 @ 5:02 PM
Hi Anamika,
Thanks for the link and the recommendation. I will check it out.
– Suramya
Comment by Suramya — December 29, 2009 @ 12:15 AM
Infibeam.com is really good site for online shopping of books. i have purchase many books from this site in discounted rates.
Comment by meenakshi — May 4, 2012 @ 4:55 PM
Thanks for the recommendation, I will try it out.
Although at a first glance the search functionality at the site is quite bad :), got loads of irrelevant results for my searches.
– Suramya
Comment by Suramya — May 17, 2012 @ 11:02 PM
It’s something to see a post that goes far back to the beginning of it all!
The online book market sees bloodbath nowdays. Good for us tough. 🙂
Here is a list of a few more e bookstores:
http://bookshelfiitroorkee.blogspot.in/2012/10/online-bookstores-in-india.html#.UGtDDU3Mj-I
Comment by Nishant — October 3, 2012 @ 1:30 AM
*though
Comment by Nishant — October 3, 2012 @ 1:31 AM