FAQ
1. Do you sell books?
2. Instead of having just one single
service, why are there two different systems: in-print book search
and out-of-print book search?
3. Is your service independent,
or are you affiliated with any particular book store?
4. I found one book title is available
from store A which is in your search list, but I cannot find it
in the search result? Do you intentionally hide some titles?
5. I have a website. May I link
to your site or add a search box on my site?
6. Is your comparison result real-time
and accurate?
7. How can you possibly afford to
provide this service free?
8. If I cannot find my desired book,
can you help me find it?
9. Can I add my bookstore
into your search engine?
10. I have a book to sell,
can I listed in bookfinder4u?
11. How is shipping rate
calculated?
12. Does your service
support multilingual book search?
13. Why I'm keep getting
errors like "Blank Page", "Cannot Find Server"
or "This page cannot be displayed" when I try to buy books
from some stores?
14. What is "Marketplace
Books"?
15. How do I use the "My Account"
feature?
16. How do I use the Wish List
feature?
17. What is price alert and How do I enable Price Alert
in my Wish List?
18. How do I use the Search History
Feature?
19. How do I write book
reviews and store reviews at bookfinder4u.com?
20. What is ISBN? Does
BookFinder4u supports new 13 digit ISBN system?
21. What is tag and how do I use
it?
22. I'm an author and can I add my website into your price list?
1. Do you sell books?
No, we're not an online book store; we only provide a free book
search and price comparison service by comparing prices at 75 major
new, used and our-of-print book stores world wide. You can search
any book using the search box on every page, then click "compare
prices" button and you will get the best price in just 5-6
seconds. For detailed step by step help, click here
2. Instead of having just one single
service, why are there two different systems: in-print book search
and out-of-print book search?
With our in-print book search and price comparison system, our price-scanning
robot searches different stores by ISBN (International Standard
Book Number) and returns all possible prices for the
same ISBN, while for most of the antique, out-of-print books, there's
no ISBN available, so our robot searches books by title, author
or keyword and matches those books of same book title and author.
Our user can still compare prices from those matched titles.
3. Is your service independent, or are you affiliated
with any particular book store?
Our service is completely independent with unbiased comparison results.
We are not affiliated with any particular book store. Unlike other
book price comparison services, we will not exclude any store from
our search list. Our goal is to provide our users with the most
comprehensive, objective service!
4. I found one book title is available from store
A which is in your search list, but I cannot find it in the search
result? Do you intentionally hide some titles?
Absolutely not. There are several possible reasons:
- Store A may be down for backup.
- Store A's server response may have been extremely slow when our
robot scanned it.
- Every book store returns a different format of data feed. If store
A changes its data feed format before we notice and we re-program
our price-scanning robot, the robot can't make sense of the response
from store A.
If you do notice this sort of problem, please let us know. We are striving to improve
this free service.
5. I have a website. May I link to your site or add a
search box on my site?
Please do. It helps people find out about BookFinder4u. We welcome all
websites to link to us, with the exception of adult sites. For various
ways to link to us, please visit our Link To Us section. Contact us if you have any questions
or need more information.
6. Is your comparison result real-time and accurate?
Yes, our search results are real-time though, by default, prices are cached
for 30 minutes in our server in order to improve performance and save
bandwidth. This ensures all prices are no more than 30 minutes old. In
regards to the accuracy of the results, we can say 99% of time, our search
result is accurate and comprehensive. But errors may occur due to the
following reasons:
- most out-of-print book stores are actually a multi-dealer marketplace
which means all book information is provided by different
book dealers and if the information they provide is not correct, neither
the bookstore itself, nor we can correct it.
- Poor network condition when user makes a search.
- The book store is updating its database when we make an inquiry
and they are not able to process our query.
- The book store is down for backup.
If you find any errors, please let us know. We are striving to improve
this service!
7. How can you possibly afford to provide this
service free?
Some of the bookstores give us a small commission when you buy
a book through them. We include results from all the bookstores,
whether they give us a commission or not.
8. If I cannot find my desired book, can you help
me find it?
We're glad to help our users to find books, although we cannot
make any guarantees. Click here to fill out the contact
form and you should receive our reply soon.
9. Can I add my bookstore into your search
engine?
If your store is associated with multi-dealer bookstores like:
Half.com, Abebooks, Alibris, Amazon Marketplace etc., our search
result has already included your store. Otherwise please contact
us if you feel online book buyers can benefit from your store.
10. I have a book to sell, can I listed
in bookfinder4u?
We're currently not providing book listing service, but
instead, we strongly recommend you to list your book in half.com,
abebooks, alibris etc. which are included in our search list.
11. How is shipping rate calculated?
By default, our comparison result always includes the
lowest shipping rate available in those bookstores we search.
12. Does your service support
multilingual books search?
Yes, just input your desired language as usual and our
price-scanning robot will do the rest for you.
13. Why I'm keep getting errors like
"Cannot Find Server", "Blank Page" or "This
page cannot be displayed" when I try to buy book from some
stores?
If you are getting errors like "Blank Page", "Cannot Find Server"
or "This page cannot be displayed", try temporarily disabling any ad blocker,
popup blocker, or Internet security software, then clear your browser's cache
and try again. Also your computer may be infected by spywares! Click Here
to see what it is and how to remove them from your computer.
14. What is "Marketplace Books"?
"Marketplace" e.g. amazon marketplace, Abebooks marketplace,
half.com marketplace, are places where different book sellers
list their books for sale. In short, "marketplace" store
only provides a book selling platform and does not sell books
directly itself, instead, all books are sold through different
book sellers.
15. How do I use the "My Account"
feature?
Please note we don't sell any books directly, but only provide
free book search and price comparison service.
By creating an account with us, you can also enjoy the following
benefits:
1. You can create and share your wish list, keeping track of the
products you're interested. You can add books into your Wish List
and set your price alert.
2. You can write store reviews and book reviews and join our ever-growing
community.
3. You can enjoy our personalized search feature which will remember
all your search history and give you better searching experience.
4 . Best of all, everything is absolutely FREE.
16. How do I use the Wish List feature?
Our Wish List is to help you keep track of the books you're interested
and alert you all the lowest prices with our "price
alert" feature. You can also use our "Tag"
system to organize or categorize all your books. On every book search
result page where "add to Wish List" link is available,
you can add the selected book into your Wish List. In you Wish List,
you can set "price alert" to be alerted when your requested
price is met. In your Wish List, you can click "update"
link to update the lowest price for the selected book and also add
notes to it. You can find your friend's Wish List by his/her email,
share your Wish List and search within your own Wish List.
17. What is price alert and How do I enable Price Alert in my
Wish List?
Our "Price Alert" feature enables user to set a requested
price for each book in his/her Wish List and our price scanning
bot will periodically search the lowest price of the selected
book, and an alert email will be sent out if the requested price
is met by the new lowest price. For each book in your Wish List,
there's a "Price Alert" link, the default is set to
Price Alert [Off]. If you click that link, you will be brought
to the page where you can set and enable price alert for "total
price"(incl. shipping) or "item price". Your price
alert information will be stored in our database and our price
scanning robot will periodically scan your requested books and
you will be alerted via your member email once your requested
price is met.
18. How do I use the Search History
Feature?
1. In order to save all your search activities and access them from any computer, you need to create
a free account, which takes less than one minute.
2. If you already have an account, please keep logging in to
save all your search activities.
3. If you don't want to create any free account, you will only
be able to view the 20 most recent searches made by you, which
will be cleaned up by our system regularily.
19. How to write reviews at bookfinder4u.com?
Member can write book reviews and bookstore reviews at bookfinder4u.com.
1. You can write book reviews from every search page where "add
book review" link is available.
2. To write bookstore reviews, you can browse our bookstore
list and go to store detail page to rate the selected store.
20. What is ISBN?
An ISBN (International Standard Book Number) is a 10-digit or
new 13-digit product number which is specific to a particular
title, edition and publisher. Searching by ISBN makes it much
easier and faster to find the EXACT book you need. Each book contains
the ISBN printed above the bar code on the back cover or on the
title page. Click here to read
more about ISBN. We now aslo support the new 13-digit ISBN system.
* As of January 1, 2007, all book and book-related products must carry 13-digit ISBNs. All 10-digit ISBNs in circulation will have the 3-digit EAN prefix "978" added (which currently represents the book industry)
Click here to read more about 13-digit ISBN transition from isbn.org.
21. What is tags and how do I use it?
1. You can think of tag as a keyword or category name, which can
be used to organize your collection of books or categorize related
books in your Wish List. e.g. if there're multiple harry potter
books in your Wish List, you can tag them as "harry potter".
or if you find books about cats or dogs to be of interest, you
can tag them as "pet books"...etc.
2. Tags are visible to all people and you can navigate among similar
books through other people's tags to find books you may be interested.
e.g. If you find a cooking book and tag it as "cooking",
you can also find similar cooking books people have tagged as
"cooking".
3. You can assign multiple tags to the same book.
22. I'm an author and can I add my website into your price list?
Yes, We can add your website into our price comparison result
for FREE. Please send us
your book information including at least the following fields:
ISBN, Title, Author, Publisher, Price, Shipping, Purchase URL
For more step-by-step user guidelines, please visit our help
center.
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