I used

to buy from Amazon because it was pretty much the only way, in this town of the solitary bookstore, to get the books I wanted. Sure, when you took into account the exchange rate & the cost of shipping, it was probably more expensive than ordering them locally, but I didn't mind that impost &, in many cases, I got the books weeks before they became available in Australia.

These days, with the Australian dollar closing in on parity with the greenback, it's cheaper to import than it is to buy locally. The rule of thumb for local booksellers, I read recently, is to double the U.S. list price & that becomes the $AU price. With Amazon having pre-order discounts, buying from there, even with shipping charges included, means that I'm paying somewhere around 2/3rds of what the book would cost locally.