Reader Mail — Books and CDs

FINDING GREAT CD RATES

“The two best money market and CD rate scanning services I’ve found so far are www.bankcd.com and www.bankrate.com. I’m now earning .4% more with an FDIC insured bank I found through www.bankcd.com (5.85% compared to 5.39%, $25,000 minimum deposit and a limit of 3 checks a month) than I was with my … [broker’s – a broker other than the one that sponsors this comment] alleged premium money market mutual fund ‘the best in the country.'” – Bill Nagler

Adds Alan Light: “Another useful site is www.banx.com/wsj/savcd/savebox.htm. Which, unlike bankcd.com, is completely free.”

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FINDING OUT-OF-PRINT BOOKS

“If you are looking for a really great book search engine, try www.mxbf.com. It will catalogue results from Advanced Book Exchange, Powell’s, Bibliofind, Amazon, Interloc, and Bibliocity … all in one swell foop! You can ask it to give you 10 books per site, 25 books per site, or more … and specify price ranges.” – Rick Geyerman

A.T.: A swell foop indeed. And as if that weren’t testimony enough:

“Amazon just got back to me about your book, Getting By On $100,000 a Year and Other Sad Tales, and after a full month, they offered it to me for $80. Now, I like some of your work, but not at $80. I declined, then found MX Bookfinder (www.mxbf.com). In 30 seconds, they found 4 bookstores with 8 copies priced $10 – $20 plus shipping. They aren’t quite as easy to use as amazon (I have to snail-mail a check to the dealer), but much faster and cheaper overall. MX Bookfinder allows you to put in requests for books they cannot immediately locate, so I put in the out-of-print anesthesia text that Amazon has not yet been able to locate. You have a point about Amazon’s cutthroat competition and the likelihood of an after-tax profit of $250 million.” – Charlie McDannald