Cat's Curiosities

While we mark down our unsold books on a regular basis, our "BEST PRICE" on any given day is the price posted. We purposely avoid selling on the "Make me an offer" auction sites, where every book is "acceptable" and paperback reprints of "The Great Gatsby" bearing ISBNs and barcodes are listed as "published 1925." And we DECLINE to jack up our prices by 20 percent so we can offer every supplicant a supposed 10 or 15 percent "discount," thus turning anyone who simply pays our asking price into a ...

Orders usually ship within 2 business days. Shipping costs are based on books weighing 2.2 lbs., or 1 kg. If your book order is heavy or oversized, we may contact you to let you know extra shipping is required. Please make sure your e-mail program will accept such an inquiry from an ABE Books address. "SHIPPING RATE" is a small pull-down menu at ABE. Media mail is the default setting; you may choose "Priority," which costs more but carries some automatic insurance protection, if you wish. To keep our basic shipping rate competitive, we do not routinely pay out of pocket to insure books valued under $50. HOWEVER (SIGNATURE REQUIRED): Since today's mail carriers have been known to dump even insured parcels on front porches or on office hallway floors, or to leave them wedged in screen doors, whereupon the postal authorities have DECLINED to pay our insurance claim when such a parcel goes missing, sneering that such parcels were "delivered as addressed," we now ship all parcels valued at $90 or more "signature required," at our expense. Customers are responsible to provide a secure shipping address. In the case of shipments valued over $90, this will usually mean a post office box, a business address, or some other location where a responsible adult is likely to be present during business hours to sign for our package. Failing that, should no adult signer be available when the mailman calls, buyers should be on the lookout for a "notice of attempt to deliver." If such a notice is ignored, USPS will generally return our package to us after about 13 days. MISSING SHIPMENTS: Missing shipments are uncommon, but be aware USPS tracking numbers are "archived" after 60 days (making them far less useful) and purged entirely after about five months (not six months, as advertised.) If you believe a domestic shipment has gone missing, please let us know within 60 days. We ship in boxes -- not plastic bags. In our experience, deliveries to France, Italy and Western Australia can take from three to 13 weeks, regardless of shipping method. We cannot control Customs delays in such countries, the luxurious seasonal vacation schedules of government functionaries, nor the proudly announced preference of Australian postal authorities to spend a week shipping even "Priority" packages across the continent from Sydney to Perth by truck -- camels apparently not being consistently available.