I agree UK book prices are not generally lower than US. This is partly due to current exchange rates. In fact, I have occasionally ordered books from the US (via Amazon.com) cheaper than I could get them in the UK.

Still, it is worth checking Amazon.co.uk to see if there is a cheaper UK edition. Sometimes books are published in paperback in one country before the other. Also, the Amazon 'marketplace' dealers are often much cheaper than Amazon itself.

I have had good luck 2 or 3 times buying from India. The books arrived in a timely fashion, much to my surprise. India is especially good for old public domain scholarship in history, especially Asian history. (Also Asian religion, of course.) Labor costs are so low that they can almost do print-on-demand and still make money. In Taiwan in 1983 publishers could make money on a press run of 200 copies.

One down side is that the books I got were very cheaply printed on flimsy paper, but that didn't bother me at all because I was paying around $20 instead of the rare-book price of $300+. (They had a sort of musty smell too.) For me it was books I couldn't get anywhere else. Whether it would be worth it just to save money I don't know.

I think that there's an opening for an Indian publishing e-commerce hub with a searchable database. I actually tried to start buying books from there more often, but quit because it seemed that there are dozens of small publishers who each have a limited offering, most of which was not interesting to me.

I have found some of the established British publishers hard to do business with, and shipping from that side of the Atlantic is both slow and expensive. I've also thought there would be a niche for a book retailer shipping British and European books to the US more cheaply and efficiently. The cost could be reduced and speed increased if books were air-shipped in large lots from that side and then shipped individually from an American location.

You might like to try http://www.bookfinder4u.com/

I've bought textbooks from India a few times. No problems so far.

You can go the middle route and buy the 'international' edition of a textbook at a price cheaper than the American edition. The int. edition usually just means it's a paperback instead of a hardcover. Sometimes the international version will be black and white, and/or use worse paper.

I bought an entrepreneurship text for a class that cost $50 for the int. edition (off Ebay), but $126 for the American version. The only difference was the cover (and that it had plastered on the back corner 'not for sale in America').

When I first came to the US, I had brought along my textbooks from India. These were legally published by McGraw-Hill India or equivalent Indian edition etc. As John mentioned, they had bad covers, absorbent flimsy paper, black and white pictures where the original US hardcover edition might have had nice glossy paper, color pictures etc. I once had the unfortunate occurrence of trying to get an autograph from a prof on his book and the staff there trying to shoo me away politely because they thought the book was bootlegged.

In any case, I recommend Indian editions of science and engineering books. I am less sure of the more esoteric books.

most of the books i'm interested in are science & statistics. thanks for the feedback so far.

third world textbooks lack all the fancy color graphics and inserts of their American counterparts, a big plus in my opinion, even apart from the huge price differential