I [heart] Books from India

[nibot]

I have recently ordered a bunch of books from Books From India, aka AllTimeBooks.com, aka Oscar Publications. They are dramatically cheaper than the U.S. editions:

Title	U.S. (Amazon)	India (+ship)	Ratio
Statistical Mechanics by Pathria	$82.95 (82.95)	16.54 (21.54)	506% (385%)
Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill	95.00 (74.10)	15.84 (20.84)	600% (356%)
Quantum Field Theory in a Nutshell by Zee	52.50 (42.52)	11.09 (16.09)	473% (264%)
Total	$230.45 (199.47)	43.47 (58.47)	530% (341%)

The U.S. price of these three books are, on average, 524% of the price in India. Moreoever, comparing the (discounted) Amazon.com price with the Indian price including shipping, the cost to order books from Amazon is still 335% of the cost to order them from India. At $5/book, even postage from India is cheap.

In the case of Pathria, which I have already received, the edition is exactly the same as the U.S. edition (at least on cursory inspection) except for the addition of an Elsevier hologram on the front, a little oval that says "Respect Copyright — Eliminate Piracy," and this note on the reverse: "This edition is for sale in Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka. Sale and purchase of this edition outside of these territories is unauthorised." Make no mistake; it's authentically published by Elsevier. Buying their "foreign" editions is a satisfying way to give Elsevier the bird. (-:

To do: link to that post where I wrote to Academic Press asking why their books cost so much

Comments

[pixieza.livejournal.com]

grrr! that makes me rue the price i paid for pathria. if only i'd known earlier...

i knew you could buy cheap books in india, but i never thought it would work through the net. i was calculating with a friend of mine that it would be cheaper to take a weeks holiday in india each year to pick up textbooks, than to buy them here!

[easwaran.livejournal.com]

What are the pages like? As I recall, most books from India that I've seen are on fairly thin paper that seems to smudge more easily than the paper used here for academic publishing. With lots of these books that won't matter I'm sure, but there are probably some that you want to keep in good shape for your whole career.

[nibot.livejournal.com]

The one book I've received so far seems to be exactly the same binding, paper, and everything else as the U.S. edition.

Really?

[ucbfumbler.livejournal.com]

I believe the DMCA doesn't prevent you from buying DVDs from outside your region. It makes it illegal for you to circumvent built-in encryption to read those DVDs (ie. DeCSS).