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The popular choice for purchasing music books online is sheetmusicplus.com. The advantage of this site over general book sites is its offering of only music books and abilities to browse titles by artist, composer, instrument and other music oriented categories.

On line browsing not looking for a specific title - can be daunting in these sites which offer several hundred thousand titles to choose from, know how books of your general interest are tagged. Alternately look at titles that match series names of books you have purchased in the past.

While musicnotes.com is similar in layout, capabilities and offerings as sheetmusicplus.com they appear to have committed fully to the new digital download capability and offer many titles and songs in an electronic file for immediate delivery and the ability for you to print it from your computer. They have three levels of files: Musicnotes File "instantly printable digital sheet music plus an interactive, downloadable sheet music file", Musicnotes Collection "a collection of several Musicnotes files (digital sheet music plus downloadable files) available in one purchase", and Guitar Guru Session "interactive guitar lesson featuring virtual fret board, adjustable tempos and looping capabilities. Includes digital sheet music or guitar tab"

While Amazon.com is know for its new book sales, and certainly new music books are in their catalog, Amazon's Marketplace offers a network of independents and individuals that offer books new and used that Amazon may no longer carry or offer current books at a lower price because they are slightly used. This offers a great single spot to search many providers for that more obscure or out of print book you may be looking for. To access the available sources, description of book condition and price within Amazon.com, simply search for the book as you normally would and once on the book's page there is a link titles with "Used & New". Be sure to read the comments, check the seller's ratings and understand the condition of the book you are purchasing and the price. Another great advantage is that purchases are made through your Amazon.com account (Amazon takes a cut from the seller), so no new account setup or payment options are needed, other than the normal Amazon.com checkout. You will be paying a $3.99 shipping and handling charge, so keep that in mind when determining the total price you are willing to pay. These suppliers are required by listing agreement to ship the product within three days and your item should arrive in six to ten days.

With many potential suppliers you may need to start with an idea of what you are looking for. Current books in a standard format are easily fulfilled at sheetmusicplus.com, while digital formats have the greatest offering at musicnotes.com and those out-of-print or obscure titles can be easily searched and purchased from many suppliers through amazon.com and its Marketplace. With the speed and ease of online purchases the best advice is always to shop around, searches for a particular title in a search engine like google or yahoo invariably turn up multiple purchase points to find the best price and value combination. Keep in mind that the larger dedicated sites like those listed here offer valuable customer service and you usually can not go wrong with any of these choices for your online music book and sheet music purchases.

Learn more about this author, Chuck Moyer.
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