I’ve mused before about buying books online or from my local bookshop, and my preference is definitely to browse through my favourite independent bookshops and enjoy touching the books, reading the first pages, and discovering books I didn’t even know existed yet. But in recent weeks I’ve been a bit let down by this strategy and I’ve gone online again.

I really wanted to buy a particular Australian novel as a gift for a friend who had a birthday. I can’t tell you which book yet, because I’ve yet to give it to this friend, who might read this blog, and I hate spoiling surprises. In any case, it’s a book that’s probably about ten years old, and I guess for this reason it has now disappeared from the bookshelves of my favourite stores. So I went to Fishpond.com.au but of course, the price, like all books bought in Australia, is astronomical.

I finally took up the tip of heading to the Book Depository, a UK company which offers great prices plus the bonus of free delivery worldwide. I don’t quite get how they manage this, because I’m sure the postage costs to some of the places they deliver will be more than they’re charging for the book. But who am I to argue, and they’re now winging me a copy of this Australian book (ironic, right) for a fraction of the price it would have cost me to buy it here in Australia. This makes me a bit mad, but I’m not made of money and although I would have supported my local bookshops and paid more for it there if they’d had it in stock, that’s as far as my philanthropic streak goes.

In any case, I’ll report back on how the service from the Book Depository goes. When price is the key factor then they are definitely ahead of most when it comes to getting books sent to Australia, so if they also do it quickly and politely I’ll be giving them a big thumbs up.