Suppose I Buy 12 Books: A Comparison of Book Sellers

Suppose I were to buy 12 books, coming mainly from a reformed/evangelical perspective, what online book seller should I use? Although I am Canadian, to make the comparisons fair for the American dollar only merchants, I will pretend I am American and use Amazon.com instead of Amazon.ca.

I tried to select a wide range of reformed/evangelical-oriented books.  The 12 representative books are:

• Apologetics to the Glory of God: An Introduction by John Frame
• Acts of the Apostles (Geneva Series of Commentaries) by J. Alexander
• Easy Chairs, Hard Words: Conversations on the Liberty of God by Douglas Wilson
• Valley of Vision: A collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions
• The Christ of the Covenants by O. Palmer Robertson
• 12 Challenges Churches Face by Mark Dever
• The Humanness of John Calvin by Richard Stauffer
• The Justification of God by John Piper
• Dining with the Devil: The Megachurch Movement Flirts with Modernity by O.S. Guinness
• A Christian Manifesto by Francis Schaeffer
• A Lifting Up For The Downcast by William Bridge
• When Sinners Say I Do by Dave Harvey

And the sellers I’m comparing are: Amazon, Monergism Books, Solid Ground Books, Christian Books, Westminister Theological Seminary Bookstore, and Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service.

Keep in mind I’m not comparing customer service or shipping, this comparison focuses exclusively on price and availability.  Obviously whether one can get free shipping, timely shipping, and attentive customer service will impact your experience just as much, if not more, than price and availability will. In my experiences, Amazon and Monergism Books are generally very good with shipping and customer service, but I can’t vouch for the others.

In terms of availability, Amazon and Christian Books were the best.  They had all the books. Monergism Books, Westminister Theological Seminary Bookstore, and Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service were not bad with 9/12 books.  Solid Ground Books was the worst with only 3/12 of the books.

We must of course make allowance for Solid Ground Books, since they tend to focus in their selection more than the other sites (another story for another time: I was not thrilled with their service the last time I tried to order).

In terms of pricing, Monergism Books was the best–featuring the lowest price on 6 of the books! Westminister Theological Seminary Bookstore, Cumberland Valley Bible Book Service, and Christian Books were pretty good with 2-3 books being the lowest price.  Amazon (surprisingly) and Solid Ground Books were the worst, never carrying the lowest price on any books.

So overall, I must give kudos to Monergism Books for showing the best in this comparison. They offered the best prices and, while not dominating our evaluation of availability, they did pretty well in that category too.