How Do I tell if a Book is available?
What does "Available on our shelves" mean?
It means we believe we have the book on the shelf and can usually ship it in 1 or 2 days, barring holidays. Since the epidemic, we've fulfilled almost all our orders through a third party distributor, rather from our own stock. We're in the proces of changing to tap books from our warehouse shelves.
What does "Ships in 1-8 days" mean?
This indicates orders that ship from a distributor's warehouse rather than our own warehouse stock.
What does "Email or call for price" mean?
As it says in the small print, you're looking at a book we don't have and almost certainly can't order.
The ”Email or call for price: wording is machine generated, isn't ours, and we're unable to reword it.
What does "Special Order" mean?
This means we know something about the book, but we probably can't get it currently.
Titles flagged with this language can indicate books caught between print runs.
How do I order?
You list a book. How do I get it shipped to me?
Set up a website account, if you haven't already, and select either credit card or PayPal as the means of payment.
We’ll ask you to supply a shipping destination, whether you’d like the book shipped with a gift receipt instead of our regular invoice, and there’s a box to leave a comment, in case you’d like to do that.
The “Next” and “Review order” buttons sometimes confuse customers. Once you’ve finished filling out the form click “Review Order.” On some browsers at some zooms, you might need to scroll down to find it.
If you click “Next” after going through the form, it takes to back to the beginning. Great if you wanted to correct something, not so cool if you’d rather finish placing the order.
Can you ship me a used book?
Right now you can do that from our listings on Alibris and Biblio. Once we sort our affairs out a little more, we’ll start listing used books here on universitypressbooks.com as well.
Can I have a book shipped to someone other than myself?
Usually. Be aware that we scrutinize such orders with a wary eye because this is a warning flag for credit card fraud. We ship orders for multiple copies of expensive textbooks only to customers with a substantial track record with us.
How do I return a book?
If you purchased a book through this on-line store, ship it back to us. Once we process the return, usually in a couple days after receiving it back, we'll email you a check that covers the sale price of the book.
If a different problem occurred with your order, contact us. We'll do what we can to straighten it out.
How do I resolve problems with my order?
I placed an order but I haven't heard anything back from you. Not even an acknowledgement. Should I worry?
Get in touch through our contact form. Your order probably didn't go all the way through.
A successful order receives an automated email response soon after you've submitted your it. If you've been waiting for more than an hour, this probably means something has gone wrong.
It's been three and a half weeks (or longer) and my book still hasn't come! What gives?
You should either receive the book by then or heard from us about some other estimated time of arrival within 25 days of placing an order. There are three major exceptions:
We do offer pre-orders on certain books announced but not yet published. These ship on or rather close to their publication date and you should receive them within 21 days of shipping.Very occasionally, a publisher will push a pub date back after initially announcing it. Most of the tine this merely delays shipment. Once in a great while, it can forces us to cancel the order, usually when they don't specify the new pub date or raise their cost to us above the pre-order price.
Sometimes the distributor and/or publisher runs out of stock themselves and the publisher has to schedule a fresh print run.
When we don't have a book in our own warehouse, we'll tap the stock of a distributor. Since most of its warehouses are located across the continental divide, weather sometimes bogs delivery down.
Contact us whenever an order hasn't arrived within 25 days and you haven't heard from us. Most orders arrive before then.
We'll be happy to look into your order.
Who are you?
What is University Press Books?
We were a brick and motar store that operated in Berkeley, California, at the south side of the Cal Berekeley campus, between 1974 and 2020. Since then, after a month's hiatus, we've operated on-line and at in December of 2021, we opened a wall inside the Musical Offering Cafe and Music Shop. Beside this web store we also list with Alibris and Biblio and have a page on Bookshop.
We specialize in showcasing titles published by presses run or established by universities. We also sell books for inquisitive, discerning readers published by commercial presses, large and small, including poetry.
Are you the University of California Press?
No. While we handle a number of their titles, we're actually different entities.
We don't publish books. We're a privately owned business, even though we sell books to the university community and host readings by faculty, student groups, and others associated with the university.
If you're looking for the University of California Press, visit them at ucpress.edu.
How does a university press differ from a trade press?
Everyone who reads at all is familiar with trade presses, the Doubledays, Knophs, Penguins, Random Houses, Scribner'ses, Simon & Shusters, Hachettes, Vintages, a whole host of commercial imprints that publish fiction and non-fiction aimed at a general audience.
University presses are owned by colleges and universities (or at least started out that way).
While they mostly publish titles aimed at readers already knowledgeable about their topics, they also release titles aimed at general readers, such as UC Press's nature guides, Oxford's Very Short Introduction series, and a wide assortment of subjects, ranging from Egyptian history, labor movements, Picasso, to anthropogenic global warming. Ususally written by academics, sure, but a fair number are intelligible to a curious lay public.
What is IndieBound/IndieCommerce?
UPB belongs to a trade group, the American Booksellers Association, who runs IndieCommerce, a service that hosts this very website and those of a good number of other snakk business bookstores.
IndieBound connects book lovers to such independent book stores near where they live, study, or work.
Go to indiebound.org to learn about other independent bookstores, find out what's going on in book culture, and discover why shopping with dominant on-line retailers might not be in your long-term interest.
What is Bookshop?
Bookshop is an on-line platform that partners with independent bookstores to snatch market share from monopolistic on-line retailers.
Bookshop shares a portion of what you purchase from their site with us and other independent bookstores.
Our Bookshop page also enables us to draw attention to books worth your reading just as our own catalog pages do.
When Is Your In-person Retail Space Open?
Our store front is now contained within the Musical Offering Cafe and Music Shop. During the work week you can visit our display wall between 10AM to 4PM. On the weekends, that's 11AM to 4PM.
The Musical Offering closes for Memorial Day, Independence Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. It sometimes closes for other hilidays and Cal intersessions when lack of business warrants. If in doubt call 510.849.0211.