A Prayer For Owen Meany Amazon

Getting Your Hands on A Prayer for Owen Meany

John Irving's third novel is a thick book. Nearly 750 pages in most editions, it follows John Woolf and his friend Owen Meany through decades of New Hampshire life. If you are looking to buy it, Amazon is the most common route people take, but it is not the only one and it has some quirks you should know about before clicking checkout. On Amazon you will find this book in several formats. The hardcover first edition is still in print from Ballantine Books, and that is the standard edition most people want. There is also a mass-market paperback, a large-print version, and the Kindle edition. Each has different pricing and different availability depending on which marketplace you are browsing. The US store and the UK store carry different inventory and different prices, so check both if you are near a border or ordering internationally. I bought my first copy in 2008 from a third-party seller on Amazon. It arrived with a bent spine and a coffee stain on page forty-two. The seller was rated 98 percent positive with three thousand transactions. You learn pretty quickly that the seller rating matters more than the product rating for used books. A product can have four-point-seven stars because everyone loves the novel. That tells you nothing about whether a specific used copy arrived in decent condition. I now always read the most recent reviews left by other buyers of that exact listing before purchasing. The seller's own description usually says something vague like "good condition" which in used-book language can mean anything from shelf-worn to someone's nightstand water-damaged mess.

The Kindle edition is priced differently across regions and sometimes goes on sale without warning. I have seen the digital version drop from eleven dollars to four dollars on a Tuesday afternoon with no announcement. Setting a price alert on CamelCamelCamel or using the Keepa extension will save you money if you are not in a hurry to read it. Those tools track price history and email you when it dips below a threshold you set. I use Keepa and it has paid for itself dozens of times on this title alone. One edge case that trips people up is the audiobook format. The unabridged narration is done by David McCullough and it runs about twenty-one hours. Amazon sells it through Audible, and if you do not have an Audible subscription the per-download price is steep. Some people try to buy it as a regular Kindle purchase and get confused when the file does not open. The Audible version uses an .aaxc format that only plays through the Audible app or authorized software. It will not open in iTunes or on a standard MP3 player. If you want the audiobook and you already pay for Audible it is a good deal. If you do not, the upfront cost is hard to justify compared to borrowing from a library. The library route is worth mentioning because many people skip it. Libby and OverDrive carry the audiobook and the e-book version. I got the audiobook on hold through my local library system and it took three weeks. That is a lot faster than the two months it sometimes takes for Interlibrary Loan to track down physical copies at other branches. There is also a signed first edition floating around the secondary market that collectors chase. Those sell through AbeBooks and eBay more often than through Amazon itself. If you see a first edition listed on Amazon from a third-party seller claiming it is signed, verify the imprint page before buying. Some listings conflate first trade editions with actual first editions. The real first edition from 1989 has the Ballantine Books logo on the spine and the date line "First Printing" or "First Edition" printed on the copyright page. Later printings drop the edition statement and just list the reprint number. I learned this the hard way when I paid four hundred dollars for what I thought was a first edition and it turned out to be a tenth printing from 1994. The seller had misread the copyright page themselves. Returns on used books through Amazon are straightforward if you catch it early, but you lose the window after thirty days.

For most people reading this for the first time, the mass-market paperback from Ballantine is the most affordable route at around seven or eight dollars new. The Kindle version sits around ten dollars at full price but frequently dips lower. The hardcover is the best physical copy and the one most people end up keeping on their shelves. The audiobook is excellent if you commute a lot. The library route costs nothing and covers every format. Those are your options and they are fairly standard for a book that has been in print since nineteen eighty-nine.