Book queries

Are you searching for a book?
Please describe what you want in the box below and we will get back to you as soon as we can.

You can also choose to add your name to our "Wants List" (see below) in case the book becomes available in the future.

See how it works here.

How it works....
We are unfortunately not familiar with the title of every book available (although we try our best) and we have well over 130,000 books to look through, so if you can't decide which category in the "Type of Book" field best decribes the book, please add as much information as possible into the "Description" field.

Relevant information to help us search includes an idea of what you believe the book is about and a physical description if you have seen a copy.

• Is it fiction or non-fiction?
• What is the general topic it covers?
• Is it tall, thick and covered in dark red cloth?
• Was it published in the last 10 years or 50 years?

The publisher can be helpful if you are looking for a specific edition, but we can't search by it, and we only record ISBN numbers on our new specialist stock.

And remember that we need an email address, or we can't contact you back!

Arty Bees' "Wants List"

We keep a database of titles that customers are searching for, in case the books come in at a later date.

This is not a perfect system as it is not automated — we do not have all our books catalogued (see why here) and we do not "search" for books outside our own stock* . When a book comes into the shop that we think might be on the database, we look it up and then contact the customer in question.

While this may sound fairly haphazard our "Wants List" database is well organised and we all try to stay familiar with the requests on it. Also, as a general rule, a book gets handled at least three times before it reaches the shelf, and even then we are constantly tidying, re-sorting and trying to fit more on the shelves so somebody will usually spot it, if it was missed the first time.

We used to hold all entries permanently but the list has just started to get out of hand so we have started using time periods to keep the list at a managable size, any old entries from before we started doing this (about July 2007) have been 'grandfathered' in as permanent entries.
If no other time period is specified (e.g. if you email us directly) Wants List entries will be held for 1 year.
We are happy to give you a permanent entry (especially when looking for rare books), but we may contact you periodically, not more than once a year (probably not even that, because we're lazy) to make sure your contact details are correct, and that you still want the book.

• Obviously the more information the better, especially on what sort of topic the book is about — however we will do our best if you do not know.
  
• Broad requests are good, e.g anything by a particular author or illustrator, or anything on a small topic e.g. handwriting analysis, or the Knights Templar.
  
• Very broad requests e.g. books on World War Two, or anything on rugby, are impossible. We simply have too many books on topics like these to list them all and get back to you.
  However you can supply us with a list of particular titles you are after, or your personal catalogue if you are that organised. You can send longer lists as attachments to our email address.
  
• If there is more than one person after a particular title that has come in, we contact customers in preference of oldest requests first.
  
• If you no longer require the book when we contact you, there is no obligation on your part to buy it.
  
• If you want to have your request deleted from the database, or you need to update your contact details please contact us.

* The exception to this is the new titles we can try to source through our suppliers, but we stock a very limited range of new books - Science Fiction, Fantasy and Detective fiction, some New NZ publications (including our own Terawhiti) along with the Taschen range, and assorted remaindered new books at a discounted price.

See our Privacy Policy regarding your details.