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Ethical Book Search

Helping you buy books from responsible book sellers around the world

About Ethical Book Search

You would prefer not to spend your money on a company that avoids paying taxes, or treats the people who work for them badly, or is damaging the environment.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to buy your books from a reasonably ethical supplier.

In Australia we search Better World Books, Biblio, ebooks, Readings and World of Books for the book you want.

This service is in 'beta' which means it is an early version of the service.

These booksellers are not perfect but they have much better records than many of their competitors. They:

Better World Books is a certified B-Corporation based in the US and sells both new and second hand books. It is a for-profit social enterprise and is committed to supporting literacy. Every time you purchase a book from Better World Books they donate a book to someone in need and they also give grants to non-profits and libraries for literacy projects.

a market place for local bookshops to sell world-wide.

ebooks is an independent ebook retailer that sells worldwide

Readings is an independent retailer of books based in Melbourne.

World of Books is based in Sussex and sells second-hand books. They have a particular focus on sustainability and the circular economy.

We are looking for more booksellers to add to this search to make sure that you can find the books that you want. We welcome your suggestions for responsible booksellers who sell online that you would like us to add to the search.

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Why shouldn't I just by my books from Amazon?

Amazon has a very poor track record when it comes to behaving responsibly and buying books from them is damaging to our society and to authors.

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How is this site different from AbeBooks?

AbeBooks is a subsidiary of Amazon. Amazon and its subsidiaries AbeBooks, Audible and Book Depository scored zero, the lowest possible score, in Ethical Consumer's Offer Guide which surveys the social and environmental records of companies.

Making use of this site to find the book you want to buy means that you are not contributing to AbeBooks or Amazon.

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Other options for buying books

You could also try these book sellers who all accept online orders and deliver nationwide:

Your local bookshop can probably order this book for you if you contact them.

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Alternatives to buying books

Your local library may well have (or be able to order) the book that you want to read. Use World Cat to find the book you want in a library near you.

For older literature Project Gutenberg is worth a look. It is a library of over 60,000 free eBooks, with focus on older works for which U.S. copyright has expired.

There is also the Open Library which is dedicated to make the world's literature accessible to everyone. It provides access to many books to read and borrow online.

You can also use Bookmooch, a book swapping service, which matches you up with people who want books that you are happy to give away and people who have books that you want to read.

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Is there an Ethical Book Search browser extension that I can install?

We haven't created one but we can recommend the Amazon Alternatives extension which is available for Chrome and Firefox. This extension will show you alternative places to buy, including links to Ethical Book Search, when you browse books on Amazon's site.

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How do I add or correct the information about book that we display on this site?

We use a variety of sources to try to make sure we have as accurate information as possible about most published books, however sometimes books are missing or the information we have about them is incorrect.

Our preferred source of information about books in Open Library and the information in it is crowd sourced. You can sign up for a free account with Open Library and start contributing to their book catalogue by adding books or updating information about existing books.

If you spot that we are missing a book of have the wrong information about a book then:

  1. Create an account or log into your account on Open Library.
  2. Follow Open Library's instructions for adding/suggesting edits to books.
  3. Wait a few hours for edits to be accepted by Open Library and then for our site to pick up this new information.
  4. Search for the book again on our site and the book should appear with the updated information.

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How is this site paid for?

Many of the links to book sellers on this site are affiliate links which means that we will earn a small commission if you follow one of them and then buy a book from that book seller. We do not allow affiliate programmes to determine which book sellers we list.

50% of the affiliate revenues that we earn go towards supporting the costs of running this site and we donate the other 50% to Room to Read which helps children in historically low-income communities develop literacy skills and a habit of reading, and by supports girls as they build skills to succeed in school and negotiate key life decisions.

If you want to avoid being tracked you can still use Ethical Book Search, just switch affiliate links off.

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Who owns and maintains Ethical Book Search?

Ethical Book Search is built and maintained by Joel Chippindale and is owned by his company Monkey's Thumb Ltd.