Living abroad, as opposed to being a tourist means that probably at some point in time you will want to buy a book (if ebooks haven't taken over by this post). You might not have alot of choice if you want to buy a tourist book to send to friends and for authenticity's sake you might have to buy local. You have to admit it would be kind of cheezy to buy something that could easily be obtained online back at your friend's place of living.
Here in Australia, the price markups are huge and it isn't just GST. I've seen books that are listed for $18 US be sold at stores in Australia for $70+ AUD. If you take the strong Aussie (dollar) into account it's worse. Ahhh but now the temptation is to immediately go to Amazon.com which charges $4.99 per order and $4.99 per item shipping internationally. But you also have another option: bookdepository.com which claims to have free shipping. The thing about bookdepository.com is the prices, while nowhere nearly as bad as Australia, are often higher prices than the prices of Amazon.com - sometimes high enough to make going through Amazon.com better. It can also depend on the mix of books you want. On the other hand, strangely enough, some prices at bookdepository.com are lower than Amazon's - without even including Amazon's shipping.
So there's always the question of value of time. If money isn't that much of an object for you but you still want to feel like you are being frugal go through Amazon.com or bookdepository.com - instead of off the shelf from Australian book sellers (Sorry Readings, even you get undercut too). If you want to save even more money then I'd do the price computations between bookdepository.com or Amazon.com. Anyone have a better online store? do let me know.
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