They also deliver worldwide for free. Meanwhile ordering a 13.18€ book from Amazon.de will incure 9.85€ in postage because my closest Amazon is an entire Baltic Sea away.
(Well, technically Amazon.de has free deliveries too – you just need to buy order at least 99€ worth of them at once)
"They also deliver worldwide for free.". They calculate shipping in the price. So depending on where you are you will see different price of the book. Still, the only option to get many english books shipped to a big part of the world.
I just checked a book ( The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson in paperback ) for shipping to New Zealand.
Book Depository is $NZ 21.19 total. Including shipping a NZ Tax (GST). Discounted from $24.77
Amazon is $26.27 for the book, $24 for shipping, $7.50 for tax and $1.30 for "Exchange rate guarantee fee". Total is $NZ 59.27 or almost 3x what Book Depository wanted.
Wow, are you forced to have that if you make that purchase? That's a huge percentage to charge to cover someone's exchange rate risk over that timespan with those currencies. Someone's making out like an absolute bandit there.
Well, "extremely cheap" shipping then. I had that 13.18€ Amazon.de book pre-ordered on Book Depository for 14.00€. So the Amazon.de delivery is 12 times the cost of the Book Depository shipping cost.
Had to order it from a local retailer instead since it releases in June, where it cost me 16.10€ with shipping.
(Well, technically Amazon.de has free deliveries too – you just need to buy order at least 99€ worth of them at once)