Getting started
Finding the title you want
Forthcoming titles and out of print titles
Searching for Prices
Buying the book you want
Things to take into account when choosing where to buy from
Your basket - find the best multi book and shop purchases
Other Features
The menu bar icons explained
Suggestions
Getting started
BookBrain is designed to be easy to use. If you take the time
to read this short guide you'll soon be making the most of this powerful tool.
There are only two steps to finding the best bookseller for you. First find
the title you want, then do a price search on it.
Finding the title you want
You can look for books by title, author, publisher or isbn.
To do this use the search for box at the top of every page. For instance
if you are looking for 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' by Tom Wolfe, type 'bonfire'
into the search for box. A list of books with the word 'bonfire'
in their title will be displayed. To reduce the number of results you get, make
your search text more specific e.g type 'bonfire of the vanities". Alternatively
if you get no results or don't see the desired title make your search less specific.
Searching by the ISBN is great if you know it, since it uniquely
identifies a book.
The search is case insensitive, which mean it doesn't differentiate
between lower and upper case characters - e.g. 'a' or 'A'.
If your search brings back more than 10 titles, click on 'next'
to go through each page of results, to find your title - or try being more specific.
Forthcoming titles and out of print
titles
The results of your search will give information about each
title. Important things to look at to make sure you select the right book are
the binding type ( e.g. paperback or hardback ) and the print status. If a book
was not released when our data was last updated we will show 'forthcoming' by
it - this doesn't mean it will definitely not be available, so it's probably
still worth doing a price search on it. Similarly if a book is shown as 'out
of print' it may still be worth doing a price search on because some of the
bookshops may be able to obtain it for you.
Sometimes there will be multiple version of a certain book,
for instance 'Bonfire of the Vanities' shows 2 paperback versions, because one
is a film-tie in. Looking at the list price we show may help you differentiate.
Also when you do your pricesearch we show a bookjacket image where we have one,
this may help you ensure you have the correct version. Audio versions of books
are also listed.
Searching for Prices
Now that you have found your book, simply click on the title.
BookBrain will give you more detail about the book, including a picture of the
jacket and a brief description if available. It will then show a list of all
the bookshops which stock the book along with prices, stock information and
delivery cost. The total price shown includes the delivery charge if any.
Sometimes bookshops take too long reply to BookBrain and so
even though they might have the book are not shown. You might give them another
chance by refreshing the page.
Buying the book you want
Once you have decided which shop you want to buy from simply
click on the shop name and you'll be taken to their site, and wherever possible
directly to the page with your book on it. From there follow the shops buying
instructions.
Things to take into account when choosing
where to buy from.
Price is obviously an important part of the decision. You need
to look at how the shop charges for delivery (usually listed in our 'comments'
column), and consider how many books you intend to buy from them when comparing
with other shops.
Also look at stock/availability information we provide. Unfortunately
most of the Bookshops still tend to be rather vague on whether they really have
the book available for immediate shipping. This is because for most books they
can order them and receive them in a couple of days even if they don't have
them in their own warehouse.
Bear in mind that we don't endorse the bookshops by listing
them so make sure you are happy that they will be able to take your order securely
and provide you with good customer service. We hope soon to add feedback from
our users about shops to this site.
Your Basket.
The basket in BookBrain allows you to to maintain a list of books you are considering purchasing
and find the cheapest shop from which you can purchase all the books or the overall cheapest
source by using a combination of shops.
When calculating these options the basket will take into
account the quantity of each book being purchased and the shipping charges of each of the shops.
(Quick disclaimer: The basket is intended to assist you, and while its solution is usually at
least as good as a human spending quite a lot of time trying to work out the best option it's not
a perfect optimisation and so we can't guarantee it'll come up with absolutely the best solution).
You'll need to be a registered BookBrain user to use the basket and be logged in. (Not registered?
Click here to register now.)
The steps to use the basket are:
1. Search for your book.
2. Click on the book title to retrieve prices.
3. From the price results page click Add to Basket link.
4. Repeat above steps until all the books you are interested in buying are added to your basket.
5. To go to your basket click My Basket link top right of page.
6. Your basket will be displayed showing:
The Exclude Shops button - click this to exclude shops you do not want to include in your purchase
options.
The information icon - click this to get more detail on the book in the basket.
Book Title - obvious really.
Quantity - the number of copies of the book you would like to buy. If you change this click the U
icon to the right of it to apply the change.
Price Fetched Icon - Hover over this to show when the price that will be used in the calculation
was last updated. If the icon is green then the price is less than 1 day old, amber less than 2
days old, red greater than 2days old. If no icon is displayed then a price has never been fetched
(use the Refresh Price icon).
Refresh Price Icon - click this to get the latest prices for a book.
Remove Book Icon - click this to remove a book from your basket.
7. Click the 'Find best purchase options' button. The cheapest single shop section will expand
showing full details. Click the 'Click to buy' button to be taken to the book at that shop where
you can buy it. Then come back to BookBrain to do the same for all the other books in your basket.
8. If you want to see if a combination of shops is cheaper click the caption bar of the section
'Cheapest Combination of Shops'.
Other Features
The menu bar icons explained
Magnifying Glass - Do a search.
Question Mark - Takes you to this help page.
House - Takes you to the homepage.
Smiley Face - Let's you recommend BookBrain.
Envelope - Let's you send us a message by e-mail.
Suggestions
We welcome and encourage your feedback. If at any time you
want to make a suggestion click on 'suggestion'
from the left hand menu on our homepage. Also please do report
any errors you find or problems you have to us, using either 'suggestion'
or the 'contact us' icon (the envelope).