The Book Gallery - Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently-Asked Questions
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	General Questions: What is the Book Gallery? What is in this website? Can I buy books through this site? What other functions does this site offer? How to Use This Site: How do I find a book? Can I just browse the catalogue? Why are the book's details incomplete? Can I get more details on a book that interests me? How do I buy a book? What are these books with messed-up names? I can't find the book I'm looking for... Purchasing Books: How do I purchase books? Is your site secure? What payment methods are available? Can I contact you directly to deliver my details or credit card number? How do you deliver books? Do you deliver anywhere in the world? How much do you charge for shipping & handling? Can I check the status of my order online? What is your refund policy? Contacting Us: Where is your store located? Can I contact you through phone or e-mail?

General Questions


	What is the Book Gallery? The Book Gallery is an actual bookstore in downtown Jerusalem, Israel. It is the largest second-hand bookstore in the country, with several hundreds of thousands of titles for sale. The store itself has four large rooms filled with shelves for customer browsing, and a fifth space for antiquarian books (not open to the general public). The Book Gallery has existed since the year 2000, and is constantly expanding in size and inventory. For more information, please visit our "About Us" page. Back to top What is in this website? Our website offers customers a chance to browse through a part of our inventory on-line. We currently have almost 50,000 books available for browsing in our catalogue, and that number grows daily. Visitors can search our catalogue, view details on our books, and even purchase them on-line (or contact us for purchase). The website is not a true substitute for a visit to the Book Gallery, but it allows us to offer our merchandise also to those who do not live in Israel. Also, since the antiquarian books are not displayed in our store for public browsing, it is only possible to view those books through this website. Back to top Can I buy books through this site? Our site allows customers to add books to a shopping cart and subsequently purchase them using our online forms. It allows users to enter their details and commit a transaction, or request assistance directly from our customer service. Back to top What other functions does this site offer? Unfortunately, we have disabled our auctions section due to technical difficulties. At the moment, our site only offers users the ability to browse and purchase books. Back to top

How to Use This Site

How do I find a book?: The procedure for locating a specific book is quite simple. There are two ways a visitor can go about doing this.

Method #1: Search for a book using our regular search function. In the search box located on the top left of any page in our site, type in your keyword(s) and click the "search" button:

This will generate a list of all books which contain the keyword in the book's title, author name, or any other field.

Method #2, the advanced search, is used for looking in specific fields to narrow down the search. Click the "advanced search" button (also located along the top row of any page):

The advanced search page allows you to search for a word in a specific field, such as the author's name or the publication year, etcetera. This will generate fewer results, and thus may be useful if your "regular" search yielded several hundred results. You can also narrow the search down by looking for keywords in more than one field, and setting the page to "Look for all keywords together (AND)".

For example, say you want to find the book "Complete Works of Goethe". Using a regular search for the word "works" will produce a list of all books that contain this word in their titles, author-names, or extra details. This list will probably contain many hundreds of books, and may take a long time to browse properly.
Instead, using the advanced search page, a user can put the word "works" in the "Book Name" field, and the word "goethe" in the "Author Name" field. This will produce a list of all different editions of Goethe's Complete Works. To further narrow down the search, you could enter the publication's name in the "Publication name" field, or the publication year in the "Keywords" field, to look for a very specific copy.

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Can I just browse the catalogue?: Users who wish to browse our website without looking for anything specific can look through our category listings. Starting at our homepage, click the link labeled "View a list of all available categories". You will automatically be taken to a list of all our book subjects.

Clicking a subject will take you to a page listing all books related to that subject. You can browse all the books in the category in this way. Each page shows only 20 books, so if there are more than 20 in the category, use the numbers just below the category name to view more books. On the left hand side are links to other related subjects, so you can jump between categories at ease.

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Why are the book's details incomplete?: There are several reasons why this might happen:

1. Some books simply do not contain the neccesary details! For instance, a book might not contain any details about its publishing date or location, or perhaps it simply was not written by any one specific author. In such cases, we leave a field blank, unless we find it neccesary to research a book's background on our own (we generally do this for rare books).

2. The book might offer no details in English, at least not in our catalogue, because it contains only Hebrew details. In most cases however, our website will display the Hebrew details when they are the only ones available.

3. Some errors are simply unavoidable, and we are not exempt from them. It is possible that the details were ommitted when entering the book into the catalogue, or that the website fails to draw the data from our catalogue for some vague reason. We do our best to avoid these errors whenever possible, but with several dozen thousand books, a few errors can't be helped.

Regardless of the reason a detail is ommitted, you can ALWAYS inquire about the book by clicking the blue "inquire about this book" button:

The button will take you to a page where you can type in a question for our staff. We will try to obtain information about the book, and will send it to you promptly.

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Can I get more details on a book that interests me?

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How do I buy a book?

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What are these books with messed-up names?

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I can't find the book I'm looking for...

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Purchasing Books

How do I purchase books?: When looking at a book's details page, a green button labeled "add to cart" will add the book to your personal shopping cart:

This cart is saved each time you enter a book, so you can add several books over the course of time, they will not disappear from your cart.

Your shopping cart is also accessible from anywhere on our site, through the "shopping cart" button at the top of any page:

Your shopping cart page shows all the books you have added, the price of each individual book, and the total sum of all books.

The shopping cart has a large button labeled "Buy Now!" which will take you to the checkout page.

Here, fill in all the neccesary details, and click the "submit details" button at the very bottom of the screen. Once this is done, two e-mails are automatically generated: One informs us of your order, and the other is sent to you as confirmation of your purchase request. We will contact you promptly to inform you of the calculated shipping cost for the book, and any additional information we believe you'll need. It's as simple as that!

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Is your site secure?: Our site uses SSL technology to encrypt all the data entered on our website. You can view our SSL certificate by mousing-over or clicking the little lock-shaped icon. This icon appears in a different location for each browser - for instance, Explorer 6 users will see it on the bottom bar of their browser, and Explorer 7 users will see this icon next to the "refresh" button at the top of their browser screen.

Internet Explorer 7

Also, please note that we make use of these details ONLY for the purpose of your requested transactions. We do not pass this information to ANYONE, and do not send any sort of unsolicited mail. We value our customer's trust with the utmost respect.

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What payment methods are available?: We accept payment in cash, cheques, or any major credit card.

For payment in cash or cheques, you will be instructed to send the payment using registered mail. Once we have received your cash or cheque, we will promptly send the book to you.
For credit cards, our purchasing page will allow you to enter all the neccesary details. Once we've confirmed the card's validity, it will be billed, and its details will be deleted from our database.

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Can I contact you directly to deliver my details or credit card number?

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How do you deliver books?

For most deliveries we use the services of our national post office, by surface or airmail as per the customer's choice.
We also use EMS express courier service in several circumstances:

For fast shipments over 2kg (4 lbs.) in weight.
For very rare or expensive books (over 150$)
Upon customer request for insured or extra-speedy delivery.

EMS service is expensive, but is very quick (up to 7 business days), and includes full insurance on the delivered book. It is also possible to track EMS shipments on-line, using a shipment number that is issued to the customer on demand.

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Do you deliver anywhere in the world?: Due to political circumstances, several countries unfortunately refuse to accept any mail from Israel. Aside from those countries, we deliver to anywhere that has an address!

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How much do you charge for shipping & handling?

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Can I check the status of my order online?: At the moment, we do not have an online function for this. However, once an order has been placed, we usually take no more than one or two business days to finalize shipping.

Customers who have ordered books using EMS express service can check the status of their order online on the EMS website, using a code that we will supply to them upon demand.

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What is your refund policy?

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Contacting Us

Where is your store located?

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Can I contact you through phone or e-mail?

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Homepage About us Advanced Search Contact Us Help!

6 Shatz St. (26 King George st. corner) Jerusalem
Near the Artists' House and Betzal'el Academy

E-mail: info@bookgallery.co.il

TEL: +972-2-6231087 (02-6231087)

FAX: +972-2-6255513 (02-6255513)