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Bill Allen wrote, referring to "The Marine Chronometer" by Rupert Gould-

> I tried to searched Abebooks (I think I did it properly), but I
>will try it again and periodically in the future.

and-

>By the way, I purchased the Andrewes book on the lunar symposium (that
>you mentioned).  It looks fantastic -- thank you for that insight.

This was   "The Quest for Longitude", ed, William J H Andrewes, Harvard,
1996. I would be interested to know how much Bill had to pay for his copy,
if he doesn't mind telling.

===============

Buying secondhand maritime books.

I am something of a book-freak, the problem being that there's now little
free wall-space left at home, to put more bookshelves against. Books are
bought for their content, not as a "collector" looking for increasing
value; so I don't mind them being a bit grubby as long as they are intact.
If an old book is really falling apart, it will then be cheap to buy, which
might make a rebind, or retightening, worthwhile. Within reach of Oxford,
there are many local bookbinders, as you might expect.

I am a denizen of secondhand bookshops, at which you can sometimes find
remarkable bargains in maritime books. For example, I 've found in a local
shop a copy of Norie's Navigation of 1900 for ?2 (about $3). This is the
combined volume, text and tables, of over 1000 pages (they were often sold
split). The interesting aspect of this edition is that the tables relating
to clearing lunars had not yet been culled.

Being a regular customer, I get catalogues posted to me from several
maritime bookdealers in the UK. Of course, having been sorted and listed by
a specialist, they are no longer cheap.

But my book searching isn't confined to the UK, and I often find stuff at a
lower price in the US or Canada, which compensates for the shipping cost.

Mostly, I use www.abebooks.com to find my books, and this has worked well,
so far. You search by author and title, and if lucky come up with a list of
several booksellers who have it in stock. If you use "advanced search", you
can specify what country or countries the seller must be in, if you wish,
and specify cheapest-first in that listing. Prices are always quoted in
$US-equivalent, but of course you have to pay in the seller's local
currency.

One problem is that you sometimes find that the book has already been sold,
but the dealer has been slow to remove it from the abebooks "shop-window".

Having found your book at a dealer, you can click on that dealer to find
his details, and do the rest directly with him, by phone or email, which is
what I always do.

Alternatively, abebooks offers the opportunity to buy directly through
them. In that case they will charge a 10% commission to the dealer, so the
prices he lists on abebooks will have already been boosted by 10%. I don't
buy that way.

If you are buying directly from a dealer, you can use that as an argument
to ask for a 10% discount on the price he has listed on abebooks, and will
often succeed.

When buying "blind" like this, I have found the book-trade to be generally
honest and to describe the condition of the books on offer fairly. I
usually pay by credit-card, but a few small US dealers ask for cash. They
are usually happy to hold the book for a week or so, long enough to acquire
the necessary dollar-bills and post them off. This might seem risky, but it
appears to work.

I understand that amazon books also offers a second-hand service, but
charges dealers a 20% commission.

It would be interesting to learn about the experiences of other maritime
bookworms, with any hints and tips.

George.

================================================================
contact George Huxtable by email at george@huxtable.u-net.com, by phone at
01865 820222 (from outside UK, +44 1865 820222), or by mail at 1 Sandy
Lane, Southmoor, Abingdon, Oxon OX13 5HX, UK.
================================================================

   

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