You should patronize small, independent booksellers as much as possible, because we all want them to stay in business. In addition to buying from those in the above list, another way of doing that is to check out the Advanced Book Exchange. This is a nifty service through which many small bookstores all over the country (including lots of used bookstores) list their inventories in a searchable database. You can search by category (and yes, they have horror!), by author/title/etc., and you can even set up your own wish list so you can get notified if a specific book comes into stock. The first time I went there I found half-a-dozen books I'd been searching for, unsuccessfully, for years. Other similar resources are ABAA Booknet and Bibliofind.

It's hard to keep this page up-to-date with all the many booksellers coming on line, so I'll just mention a few: Pandora's Books Online , run by Grant Thiessen and his wife, is a searchable online bookstore featuring out-of-print books in horror, fantasy, sf, etc. Their horror selection is not too big yet, but maybe they'll make it bigger if we patronize them. If you do nothing else, go to their page and vote on your top 10 horror books of all time, so we'll have an expanding database for that perennial question.

A well-known horror publisher is Donald Grant Books. His website has links to other fantasy/sf/horror publishers.

And finally, despite the fact that they may be taking sales away from the small independents, there's no denying the convenience of these two big web bookstores for in-print books:

Amazon.com Books at  http://www.amazon.com

Bookstacks Unlimited at  http://www.books.com

They each have a large inventory with robust search capability, have good prices, take credit cards by phone, ship overseas as well as U.S., and most importantly, carry almost all of the small-press horror that isn't available at your local bookstore.

Amazon, for example, has nearly have everything in print and has 20%-40% off pricing. (But I write book reviews for Amazon now, so what do I know? <grin>) Amazon does have better service than Bookstacks, especially with regard to the quality of their packing. Also: Amazon has a nice feature where they will notify you when they receive authors or titles you specify -- a good way of finding out, for example, when something comes out in paperback.

By the way, I edit the Horror Category page at Amazon: if you go there and look under Amazon.com Delivers in the lower lefthand corner, there's a place to sign up for my monthly updates about new horror fiction, articles, etc. (Don't worry: you won't get any spam.)



A Note on the UK

A lot of good horror is published in the UK and only slowly, if ever, makes it across the Atlantic. Some of the dealers above will carry UK titles, and Amazon Books has many UK titles, but if you can't find what you're looking for that way, you can always order either from http://www.bookpages.com or:

Forbidden Planet
Phone: 011-44-171-497-2150
No fax or e-mail.
Credit cards accepted.

Comments: Friendly staff in famous London store dedicated to sf/fantasy/horror genres.