The 'Ins' and 'Outs' of Online Ordering

Welcome to our enhanced website. We love its availability, allowing us to keep our "doors" open 24 hours a day, which allows you to shop any time of day or night, with any device, dressed in whatever you wish. We especially love that we can showcase the unique items we carry and that you can buy them online through the use of the tabs. Just click on one and several more may drop down. We will be adding to these as we go along until they are complete. We will also be adding the ability to purchase ebooks through our website before the end of the year.  

But, as magical and as dependent as we all are on our devices and technology, they cannot always do everything, so we are especially happy when you call and we can talk to a "real" person. Okay, maybe not too technical, like how to download you ebooks, but we are beginning to learn. We love being a "bricks and mortar" store with its face to face contact and service. But, we do like that none of us needs to mind the store at 3AM (thanks to the website), so here are steps to take.

First:

You will need to establish your personal online account with us, where you only need to enter your information once. You do this on the right sidebar on our Home Page. Once established, you may place any item in your shopping cart, place orders for items online, enter a credit card, and arrange to have books shipped to you or someone else, or to pick them up at the store. You may leave the site and return later and the items will still be in your cart until you are ready to check out.

Picking up your orderin the store:

Please be aware that, while we have a lot of books on our shelves and while you may choose any book in the 2.5 million titles on this website, you know we simply DO NOT have all of those titles here in our 1,000 sq. ft. store. So, if you choose a particular title to be picked up in the store, please do not come in immediately after placing your order. We will look at the order and let you know when it can be filled. Most titles that are listed as "Usually ships in 1-5 days" can be made available for pick-up in the shop. We will call or email you as soon as your order is ready.

Ordering books to be shipped:

However, not all the titles in the database are readily available to be shipped. Unless a book is listed as "Usually ships in 1-5 days", your order will likely be delayed. A book that is listed as "Special Order", "Coming Soon", "Not Yet Published", or "Out of Print" is one that is NOT currently available from the distributor that we normally use. This means that in order to fill such an order, we will need to search other distributors, publishers, and other sources. The more places we need to search for the titles, the more the order will be delayed. And some of these books, while listed in the database, may simply not be available anywhere. Please be prepared for the possibility. Of course, we will notify you in that event.

There are many drop-down menus to explore, in addition to the 2.5 million titles available online through this site.  If at any time you get confused with where to go next, just click "The Cottage Book Shop" name to the right of our shop drawing at the very top of your screen and you will return to our "Home Page."