Quote:
Originally Posted by murg
Generally, the US version of the book is the cheapest, regardless of where in the world it is being purchased.
When purchasing from a country that has both US and UK centric books, be sure to check the entire book list, as there will usually be two versions of the book, one cheap and the other expensive.
|
In fact, I'm finding the opposite to be true, to my huge surprise. Shopping from the Hong Kong site (since I do legitimately live there), I regularly get to choose between US, UK and sometimes AUS editions, and usually find as much as a US$3 difference in prices, with the UK edition being the least expensive 60 percent of the time (AUS is always the highest). Often new books will show up at exorbitant prices for the US edition when first released, but close to half the price for the UK edition.
Here's an example: Olivia Laing's THE TRIP TO ECHO SPRING (great book, by the way) is HK$102.39 for UK edition, HK$129.79 for US edition. A HK$27.40 (US$3.52) difference. And the author is British, so you get a double bonus by getting the original spelling at a lower price.
I like reading books from the country/region where the author resides, so I get the spelling and word choices the author intended (how I loathe US editions of British authors, in which characters put things in the "trunk" of the car or ride the "elevator". And vice versa. A cowboy waxing eloquent about the "colour" of the sunset just doesn't sit well with me.). Thus, when I recently got Philipp Meyer's THE SON, a novel about Texas, I actually paid US$2.50 MORE for the US edition, just to be sure I could read it with US spelling (though after using a 50% code, the difference was more like US$1.25).