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Comment by shnksi | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for your comment, all of that is certainly true. I'm thinking through a solution that would likely come in the form of certain filters on the site. I'd try to get your region as accurately as possible or ask for input, and then serve you local bookstores in your area that have their catalogues online. Something like this would help promote local stores and help you differentiate between your local bookstores. It's not something I've started building yet but what do you think of it?

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Just as a counter. You are not obligate to listen to OP's comment, that is just one of the many perspectives that one can have around a book shopping.

Please go ahead and do build a hyper focused product which finds out most 'inexpensive' source for a book that one is clear about (that is, one is not in a discovery mode).

I'm sure there would be whole lot of students who would be super thankful about this service, there is enough of price gouging in educational segment. Even if you are not building textbook related service, still it would help.

Thanks for this. The focus of this product is cheap books. I do find it interesting to learn about different approaches to purchasing and purchasing decisions. In the long term, additional filters to support local bookstores could be a cool addition. Also, I'm looking into targeting textbooks more closely. Hopefully the textbook specific results will be better and cheaper before the end of the month.

I like it, but most of my local shops don't have their inventory or prices online, sadly.

Hmm that does make it difficult. Perhaps a solution that allows local bookstores to put their catalogues online easily, this data then feeds straight into the search product. It would be difficult and manual to make happen but it could be extremely useful.

This feels like a roundabout way to getting bookshop.org, which might not be the cheapest, but is simple to use as a consumer.

Not sure why local bookstores would like to participate in a race to the bottom, though.

Probably because Amazon is already competing with them, and they at least get some independent sales.

Spanish website Todostuslibros.com did exactly that.[1] It was sponsored by a private association of booksellers, with some public funding (this is a common approach in Europe).

[1] https://www-elconfidencial-com.translate.goog/cultura/2020-0...

that already exists: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9780988518391

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