--> 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.

This article was posted on December 10, 2005