Anyone here have bought books online, whether from Malaysian online bookstores or any of those international book-selling websites?

I'm a frequent buyer of Amazon.com and pretty much although the books I bought there are used books, I have to say that the way they organized the cheap prices AND quality are one of the factor I continue to stick with them

is it really cheap if you include the shipping charges as well?

I tend to switch between amazon.com & amazon.co.uk, depending on the book. All in all, I find that delivery from UK tends to be faster & cheaper, though.

i nvr buy online because i dont have credit card. and probably never will have one.

I buy from Amazon.com (several times a year) and Amazon.co.uk (only recently, since GBP fell) quite often and very satisfied with the whole experience.

Normally for most novels, it's cheaper to buy locally (paperbacks), but for some specialty books (Lonely Planet guidebooks, wine books, etc.) it is often very much cheaper to buy from Amazon than from local bookstores even with shipping. Lonely Planet guidebooks cost >RM100 in general, but I can get it from Amazon around RM80 (shipping included), provided I order a few books at a time.

It used to be cheaper for me to order from the US, but now with the weak GBP and strong USD, sometimes it's cheaper to buy from UK. I recently ordered a bunch of Moleskine notebooks from Amazon UK. Much cheaper than buying them here.

Buying books from lowyat.net is fine...

I'm one of the sellers but there are also many others who are selling used books, there's a LYN member that can help you source for books too, his id is 'toobad'.

Try it out, and look at my threads too juz click on my siggies...

Hi guys, was about to open a similar thread until I saw this one

Anyway, I usually buy my books online nowadays and 90+% of it are from KinoKuniya - Their service is fast and very efficient and what I really like about them is their online database of books. It really helps alot when I'm searching for a particular

Anyone here can recommend any local bookstores (local as in in Malaysia, not necessarily local 'brand') with good online DB of books? I don't mind getting 2nd hand books though and prefer to purchase online.

BTW, I special ordered books from both KinoKuniya and Borders before and found out that KinoKuniya only charge for the book's price but Borders charge RM5 per book ordered...

mphonline is a good place to shop for books online. They have pretty good online discounts too


This post has been edited by cutejams2004: Mar 31 2009, 04:41 PM

If want get it from amazon, perhaps we can do group order, at least can share the shipping fees

I'll be the first to volunteer to help(for those who don't have credit card), was thinking to get some books from there soon.

amazon shipping is very expensive for books, even if u pool together.

however, it still cheaper than wat our bookchains here charge./

I do not mind about cheap or not, well at least not too expensive till RM10 books become RM100 la..
I do mind those book that are not available here.

I never buy online. Most of the tiem check availability by search at Kinokuniya, call for confirmation and go to shop take & pay.

Will buy online only when I far from Kinokuniya.

Click on my siggies if interested getting 1st hand books at a cheap price and great condition

Just tried out Acmamall.com's books ordering, ordered 4 books (all in stock) on the 8th, received them today. Delivery time - 2 weeks, Cost 8.50 (free if order > RM 200)

Pricing: Note: I'm a HSBC cardholder, so I got an 35% discount on the listed price, I'm not sure but I believe that the other promo is if you order 4 books or more you get 25% off. In comparing the prices, Acma is on average 33% cheaper than MPH & 25% cheaper than Kino (I'm comparing listed price only, don't know what their online discounts -if any- are like).

Condition: Good, books arrive shrinkwrapped, then paper wrapped, then inside plastic courier envelope. Overkill?

Book selection: Looks like their in stock selection is good. I was able to order 3 commonly available titles & 1 rather hard to order one. Didn't test them on out of stock item or on very new (ie, out overseas but not locally) items. I'll probably do the latter test when the next Malazan/ ASoI&F book comes out.

Summary: Price is a plus as they have a better price structure (for me anyway ) than the other book retailers locally, but their delivery time is a minus. Both MPH and Kino offer 3-5 day delivery at a lower charge (RM 6/7, as opposed to 8.50 for Acma) than Acma. As an aside, their courier was weird - instead of knocking on my apartment door, he was trying to turn the doorknob . Just weird.

Another (significant) minus is that there is no pre-ordering system for yet to be released books.

The pricing alone is good enough that I'll definitely try again, and want to try out their Premium Sourcing system, see if it can work like a ad hoc pre-ordering system.

i only can buy books from stores/people who accept bank-in(s) x.x
don't have pay pal =(

i sometimes get from

amazon.com
a1books
abebooks
rightstuffs

Just wondering about the shipping charges, is it expensive? And is it safe? Meaning, the books will arrive safely?
Been meaning to try it but well, haven't got the guts, haha.

well amazon's shipping charges are the most expensive online store around... well safe? definitely ya... coz they wrapped it and put it in a box for ya... books arrive safely? ( if it's in USA... u can detect lar... once outside of USA... sorry lar... )

most places accepts credit cards / paypal... ^^

Thanks for the info snowcrash.
Just to share with the crowds,
after certain discussion with HSBC, Acmamall.com has decided to keep up their offer of 35% discount available for malaysia HSBC credit card users.
Not to mention now is the MEGASALE in Malaysia.

For books that are not out yet, Acmamall.com will allow customers to order the book 1 week before its release dates. Books will only be delivered after the release dates though..

And unfortunately as of now, sourcing out of books is not completely available.

We have recently revamped our site and I sure hope that the new layout provide a better shopping experience for our customers.
For those of you that enjoy shopping online, do put Acmamall.com as one of your option before finalizing your purchase

pricing low? well... i checked some of the price... not all is cheap... some is EVEN more expensive... ^^