I like reading books and am a book collector, especially books that are relevant to my profession. I used to spent a lot of time in MPH, Borders, Popular and Kinokuniya book stores looking for good books but always caught in the situation where I don’t know which book is best and worth to buy- “this book is useful but that book is more practical, and the 3rd book is from a well known publisher and author.”

Amazon’s information are useful, even though we do not purchase from them.

Until 7 years ago, I started to use a method in finding the best selling and good review (provided by customers) books. Honestly so far I’ve never felt regret after buying the books I found, this method saved me a lot of precious time, where I don’t need to stand at the book store for half-a-day reading through all the interested books’ cover, back page, content page and comparison. This is how:

1. Understand what topic of books you are looking for. (for example “Online Marketing”)
2. Logon Amazon and search “Online Marketing” in books department.
3. Sort books by “Bestselling” or “Average Customer Review” and read through customers review/comment for the book(s) that you are interested.
4. Books that given 4.5 to 5 stars is consider a good book, the more review the book gets, the more you should purchase the book. (I usually only buy books that are rated above 4 stars and also books  reviewed by more than hundreds customer.)
5. When you are happy and have decided on the book(s) you want buy, write down the ISBN-13, Book Title, Publisher and Author information.
6. Contact the book store you prefer – MPH / Borders / Popular / Kinokuniya (for me it’s MPH) and provide them the book(s) information for order placement. Or you can made online payment through the website if you want (I usually made online payment for bulk order and the books will be sent to my house within a few days)
7. Let’s go collect and pay for the book(s) when it is ready.

Malasyia Book Stores Website:

MPH Contact: http://www.mphonline.com/
Borders: http://www.berjaya.com/berjayabooks.htm
Popular: http://www.popular.com.my/
Kinokuniya: http://www.kinokuniya.co.jp/english/contents/network04.html / www.kinokuniya.com.sg (find Malaysia branches)

If you have any suggestion, share your tips and ideas. Let’s us, book lovers benefit from it.

I just bought a whole stack of books last month. Btw, I will eat bread everyday this month...