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BOOK SEARCHING TIPS – originally for the Beck Valley Books website but can be used on many online bookstores.

Quick Search

Use the Quick Search at the top of the website to enter the book title, the author, the ISBN or a keyword. You can type the words in upper or lower case, receiving the same results. Always take great care with the spelling of your search information.

Please bear in mind that not all books have ISBN numbers, even modern fiction. These books are published mainly for book clubs by the publisher, they are exactly the same as the original book but they do not have a ISBN. By typing in the ISBN you could be missing out on potential books for sale.

If your search is unsuccessful you will automatically be directed to the advanced search page.

Advanced Search

The advanced search is a more detailed search, allowing you search for you book in a number of ways, with additional options for you to choose from, if required.

Title:

You can input either the full book title, part of the title or keywords. If it has ‘&’ in the title and the book does not show up in the search results, try using ‘and’ or miss out completely. Also if the book title has commas, speech marks, apostrophes, etc, and again does not appear in the search results try again by missing them out completely.

Be careful if you are typing in the full book title as the book titles on the website may be very slightly different or shortened.

Author:

You can type in the authors full name or simply type in the surname. If typing in the full name you can either type for example, patterson james or james patterson. If typing in the surname only, the results will bring up any author with that surname and not the particular one you may require.

ISBN:

As fully explained above, please bear in mind that not all books have ISBN numbers. The book you are looking for may also have a different ISBN for different years it was published, therefore if you use a particular ISBN you may again miss out on other available copies of your book. If using the ISBN search, please use the full 10 digit ISBN number from either the back cover or on the reverse of the title page inside the book. The search facility on the website will not accept hyphens in the ISBN, so you would need to type the numbers only, for example 0752877186.

Publisher:

Particularly useful for older, rarer books. You can enter all or part of the publishers details, but if your book does not appear in the search results it may due to the fact that the website details do not hold all the words you have typed in, for example you type ‘ penguin publishers’ and the book details only holds ‘penguin’ then the book will not appear in the search results.

From Year: To:

This is useful if you are not certain when the book was published or you want to search for a particular year.

Additional Options

You also have available the following options (all of these options have the default set at any):

Cover: – You have the option of searching for paperback, hardback or other.

Price: – You can limit the search to a particular price range of 0-5.00, 5.01-10.00, 10.01+.

Signed Copies: – You can also search for signed copies only. Search options are yes or no.

First Editions: – You can also search for first edition copies only. Again your search options are yes or no.

Once you are happy with your search request, simple press go and the search results will be shown.