Amazing Amazon!

The winner of this year's curriculum race is, amazingly, Amazon.

Last week I ordered the various books I plan to use for the Artist's and Engineer's next school year. Some things I ordered from a curriculum publisher. They are dependable and I have never had a problem with receiving the items I've ordered.

Other resources I like to use are fairly widely available, but greatly vary in price. To avoid wasting a whole lot of cash I shop around with various internet book sellers to get my best deal. This year, Alibris gave me the best deals on the particular mix of books I wanted.

The prices of a book through Alibris may have been a few cents, or even a dollar higher than another vendor, but the additional shipping I would have to pay for another vendor made the slightly higher price still cost effective for me. There was one book, however, that I wanted to buy new (a coloring book) and was much, much less expensive at Amazon.
When I realized Amazon had the lowest price, I was a little disappointed. My experience with them has been that it takes absolutely forever for books to ship to me. I usually get a couple of emails asking me if I still want the book I ordered or if I would prefer to cancel the order. This has made them a last resort vendor for me. So I was truly surprised when a big padded envelope from Amazon was in my mailbox yesterday.

This book, ISBN 0-7624-0945-2, is a delight! The Artist is excited about it too, which makes it even better. This year she is studying medieval times through the early renaissance in history and art. About 25% of the book is from that time period. We will have about 50% of the book to use in the 2009-2010 school year, and the remainder we will use two years form now. I like that the book includes a study of each art work and a bit of history about the artists too.Have you noticed how quickly prices can change on the internet? If this book looks good to you it is available both at Amazon and Alibris. And this morning when I was looking around I saw that some seller listed new copies with Alibris for under $5. Maybe you can get a better deal than I did!