5 Questions to ask before purchasing a book online
--> What is it you want to order?
Have a clear idea of what you want to order. Do you want to
browse through a category, or do you want to read a particular
author or do you know the name of the book itself.
Most online bookstores let you to browse through them by any of
the above topics. When you are searching through a category,
type in the most relevant subject related to the book you want.
For example, if you want to search for books on "Holiday spots
in Java, Indonesia", just typing in a query for "JAVA" might
give you so many irrelevant search results on the Java
Programming language, Java coffee, etc. A better search query
would be "Holiday in Java Indonesia"
--> Are you Getting the most Upto-Date Version?
Make sure you are buying the most recent version of the book.
Sometimes, some contents areedited when a second version of the
book is printed. Though this does not happen all the time, and
though most of the online stores update such information
promptly, it is always better to make sure about buying the
latest version, right? So, when you make an online search, don't
get satisfied just because the title name and author match. Go
through all the other entries against the author ro see if any
other version of the same book is available.
--> Are you Purchasing at the Cheapest Price?
Thanks to the spiraling competition amongst the various online
bookstores, many popular books are often available at discounted
prices. Unfortunately, however, this piece of information cannot
be simply obtained from Google. This is because, search engines
use web-spiders to index the sites and most often the
information that is stored in the Cache are a few weeks old. So
the only way to know about the various discont offers is to
manually check through the various bookstores.
--> Are you purchasing a Pirated version?
Always, make sure that you are purchasing the original unpirated
version of the book. Most countries have tough laws against
piracy,and it is in keeping with these rules that you should
consciously avoid purchasing the pirated copies even whe they
are available cheaper than the market price.
--> Is your Credit Card Information safe?
This is one of the most important things to remember when
purchasing anything, not just books online. Make sure that the
website where you make the purchase is an authentic one, and not
a phishing site( sites that dupe you into revealing your
cofidential details). These details should always be transacted
through a secure form. And also remember that none of these
authentic site would ask you to give your password or other
confidential information through email. Anything confidential is
done purely on the mainsite.