Help!
This website has been designed for our trade customers: booksellers, publishers and other resellers. It offers everything that ESB either publishes itself, or markets and distributes in the UK on behalf of continental and overseas publishers.
Teachers, students and all other private customers should go to our European Bookshop website where we offer a much wider range of language teaching and learning books and materials, including everything published by British publishers.
The following notes may help you to get the most out of your searches and this website generally:
- About the online catalogue
- Browsing
- Ordering
- Payment
- Data Protection Policy
- Inspection Copies
- On Approval Supply
- Returns
- Shopping Basket
- Rating System
- Subscriptions (Periodicals)
- Stock and delivery
- Overseas delivery charges
- Title search
ESB's Online Catalogue
The catalogue includes all those books and other materials from continental publishers, or that we have published ourselves, categorised according to their suitability for specific purposes, age-groups and ability levels. Of course many titles or series may well be suitable for other purposes: the descriptions will normally make that clear.
There are three ways to use the online catalogue. If you are browsing - looking to see what we have for your particular needs - try using Browse in the lefthand column. If you have a specific author, title and/or series in mind try Quick Search first. This will look for any combination of key words from the title, series or the author's name. If that doesn't work, use Advanced Search.
All searching in our Online Catalogue is case-insensitive, (it doesn't matter whether you use capital letters or not) and ignores accents.
We add new books and materials to our catalogue every day, and the information in the online catalogue is updated every night. Estimated delivery times are based on our group's stock and ordering positions as at the previous day's close of business. They are based on small order quantities. It is always advisable to check when larger quantities are required. An e-mail inquiry facility is provided for this purpose.
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Browsing
The Browse section on the left allows you to specify the subjects (languages), topics, types of products, and age groups which interest you. As you make each selection you are shown a summary list of what we have that meets your selection.
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Ordering
To order single copies with one order reference, select the title(s) by ticking the box on the right of the title, then go to the foot of the page, add your order reference details and click 'add selections to basket'. You can delete any item, or change the quantity or order reference, in the basket. If you are not sure about a title, click on it to get more details.
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Payment
When you pay by credit card, none of the details are recorded or seen by us. Your payment is processed on our behalf by the SagePay department of Sage PLC, a major British software company which provides payment and other business services to thousands of companies worldwide.
SagePay verifies your card details and then makes the amount of the payment as per your order available for us to draw down when we have completed and delivered it. All your legal rights are preserved. Should any refund be due to you, for example if we are unable to supply some part of your order, it will be promptly credited back to the same credit card you used for the payment.
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Title Search
If you are looking for specific authors, titles and/or series, try Quick Search first. The search here is by keywords. For example, enter 'Calvino Marcovaldo' and you will get a list of every title that has those two words anywhere in the author, title and/or series. If that does not work, or you want to restrict the search by date, age-group, language etc., use Advanced Search.
In the drop-down lists on the left you can refine your search and, if needed, select more than one option at a time. For example, you can look for titles suitable for all children from 5 to 14 by clicking on the appropriate age-ranges while holding down the Control key. The same principle applies to the other category selections.
Many products are better known by their series names, especially courses with several levels and parts. In 'Advanced Search', when you enter the series name in the 'title' field, you will get a list of all the parts in the series, with brief details and a 'buy' option. If you want further details, clicking on the series will usually produce a description of the series, and clicking on the title will give you bibliographical, price and stock details.
You can restricted an author or series by using the drop-down lists on the left. Eg., to find everything by Camus in Spanish, select Spanish as the Subject and Camus as the author.
Some older titles are still in our stock database but are no longer in our catalogue. In 'extended search' the search engine will use your keywords to search our full database. The data held for these old titles is basic, but generally includes the ISBN and last price at which we sold the item. However, this could have been several years ago, so we cannot guarantee either price or availability.
All searching on our sites ignores accents and capitalisation.
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Stock and delivery
The delivery delay quoted in title information gives the approximate delivery time to UK addresses. A report of 'in stock' means the title is in stock in either our Cheltenham warehouse or one of our bookshops. If you intend to make a special journey to buy a particular book at any of our premises please phone or email first to check if your book is in stock there.
A report of 'Available shortly - your order will be recorded' means the title is not in stock but we expect new stock within 2-3 weeks at most. Otherwise, the delivery delay will be longer, and we suggest you email us at direct@esb.co.uk for more information.
Deliveries within the UK mainland are charged at 10% of goods value, with a minimum of £1.50 and a maximum of £5, and ESB retains full responsibility for the condition of the goods until delivery to the Customer's premises.
These modest standard delivery charges are based on our normal delivery service. We can usually arrange faster delivery at a higher cost.
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Overseas delivery charges
Owing to high and fluctuating fuel surcharges, it is not possible to estimate accurately delivery charges for overseas orders. We make every effort to find the most economical method of shipment, and we will only charge the amount we are charged by the shipper. This amount will either be added to the invoice for the goods, or may be invoiced separately after the goods have been shipped and we have received the shipper's bill.
If you need a rough estimate of the shipping cost, please complete your order first, then email direct@esb.co.uk with 'shipping cost estimate required' in the subject field, and quoting the ESB order number.
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Inspection copies
The inspection copy service is available only to recognised teachers in recognised educational establishments in Britain and Northern Ireland. Inspection copies cannot be sent to private addresses or booksellers, or to other countries.
Inspection copies may be kept for a maximum period of 60 days from the date of the accompanying invoice. They may be retained free of charge if 12 copies or more of the same title are ordered directly from any part of the ESB Group . Otherwise they must be returned to ESB, or paid for in full at the prices shown on the invoice.
Extensions to the 60-day inspection copy period can always be arranged when needed, but ESB must be informed in good time.
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Rating System
Our rating system is not a judgment of quality, but is designed to help booksellers, librarians and teachers to identify titles in demand.
For the first six months that a title is in our catalogue, the rating is our assessment of likely demand, based on European bestseller lists, reviews and other information. Normal rating is from 1 to 5 yellow bars. Titles in the top bestseller lists start with a yellow star.
After six months our computer rates each title according to its sales relative to the category of title. For example, sales of a bestselling textbook or novel will be much greater than of a bestselling teacher's book, but both will be graded with a yellow star.
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Returns
You have a statutory right to return any goods for any reason up to 7 (seven) days after receiving them. They must reach us in resaleable condition at your own expense. Thereafter our standard conditions apply Please refer to 'The small print' in the righthand column.
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Shopping
The best way to learn our very straightforward internet purchasing procedure is to try it. You can cancel a prepared order at any time right up to the very last 'submit' step.
Before you can place an order, you must show that you have read and accepted our Terms and Conditions of supply by ticking the appropriate box on the Order Form.
All information you submit via our Shopping procedure is encrypted on our secure website before being downloaded, so shopping this way is far safer than by telephone, fax or post.
However, if you do not want to order this way, you can still use most of the ordering procedure to prepare your order. At the final stage, instead of submitting it across the internet, you can print it on your own printer and phone, fax or post it to us as you prefer.
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Subscriptions (Periodicals)
ESB offers a subscription agency service for a wide range of European newspapers, magazines and journals. These titles can be found in the on-line catalogue in the normal way via Title Search.
The figure in brackets after the title indicates the frequency of publication, or number of issues per year, and the price quoted is for a year's subscription. Most periodicals are available on 6-month subscriptions at a proportionate price.
If the title you are looking for is not there, please use the e-mail facility to enquire further. We are always on the lookout for new titles suitable to add to our catalogue. If you find an interesting-looking magazine you have not seen before, we can usually arrange to send you a specimen copy.
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Data Protection Policy
Every care has been taken to ensure the security and integrity of this web site and of all data submitted by visitors to the site. The policy of the ESB group is not to make available to any third parties for any purpose whatever any personal details other than those strictly necessary for the fulfilment of any orders or other instructions specifically requested by visitors to our sites.
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