Special orders are our bread and butter
Here are the F.A.Q.’s
Orders are easy; we place orders several times a week; we love getting you the book you want!
In-Store Shopping
We’re open Tuesday - Saturday 11 am - 5:30 pm and Sunday 11 am - 4 pm. We have thousands of books in stock, but there are millions of books in print. We can’t fit everything into our small store! Our website showcases a tiny fraction of the books we can get, and does not reflect our real-time inventory. If you don’t see what you want, please ask!
We also take orders via email, phone, or using the “contact us” form on this website, but we love talking books and seeing you in person.
How do I order and do you ship?
You can call 215-844-1870 any time we’re open, email us at orders@bigbluemarblebooks.com, or shop on our website: Shop Big Blue Marble. In each case, pickup is at the front desk; we simply don’t have the staff to ship.
For books that need to be shipped, please use our ship-to-home partner Bookshop.org and choose us as your local bookstore. They mail directly from the same distributor we use and give us a very fair share of all purchases. If you live far from the store or you want to send books to faraway friends and relatives, Bookshop is the way to do it and it really helps us.
How long do orders take to come in?
It varies by title, but if our distributor has the book in stock, it will arrive in the store within a week or two, often within a few business days.
When you order, we’ll tell you if the book is available immediately in the store, needs to be ordered, or is on backorder so you have an approximate timeline. When your book arrives, we’ll email to let you know.
Please check your spam folder or give us a call if you feel like it’s been awhile and you should have heard from us by now!
What info do you need when I place an order?
Your first and last name, an email and preferably also a phone number, and as much specific information as you have about the book you want, such as format, edition, or translator.
If you’re certain that you want to place an order, please use specific language like “I want to place this order with you” instead of “do you have this book?” That saves us a round of emailing to confirm that you want to order and it gets your order out faster.
Please tell us from the start if you need home delivery, which is reserved for those who can’t come in for medical reasons. Please check our zone to see if you’re covered, and include your address when you email an order request.
When and how do I pay?
You might have already paid! Books you purchase through the website are paid in full, of course, and we automatically check for a customer account balance for all other orders. We can also apply a gift certificate, though those aren’t linked to customer accounts so you will need to let us know you have one. Unfortunately, account balances and gift certificates can’t be applied to purchases made on the website, but the workaround is simple: just email.
If there’s a balance owed, we ask that you pay when you place the order, which allows us to manage our staff’s time, our inventory, and our credit lines. For emailed orders, we ask that you provide payment as soon as possible, but we won’t delay an order to wait for prepayment unless you’re ordering one of the rare books that falls outside our return policy. (We’ll let you know!)
We can take a credit card over the phone any time we’re open. In person, we take card, check, cash, or electronic wallet (i.e., Apple Pay). You can use the pay-to-account feature on our website at any time, which is also the easiest option for us. We are not set up to take Venmo, Cashapp, etc. at this time.
You keep mentioning customer accounts — what are they?
This is an easy way to pay for books in advance, which is useful to pay for orders, to maintain a book budget, or to create a household book fund. You can create or add to one just by using our "pay to account" option online. Choose an amount to pay in, and we’ll charge your purchases to the account and let you know when it runs low.
This is the simplest option for us: it’s much faster than manually entering credit card information over the phone, it helps us stay ahead of our credit limit, and it will help you get your books faster. Any funds over the amount of your purchase remain on your account for future purchases.
How do I collect my order?
Come in any time we’re open and ask at the counter - give us your last name and we’ll get the books.
We are no longer using pickup shelves for no-contact delivery, but if coming into the store poses a health problem, we can bring your order to you curbside during our regular hours. Just phone to let us know when you are on the block and need that service. No need to schedule ahead of time.
Oh, snap! I forgot about my order! Do you still have it? / Can I get a refund?
Our 30-day return policy applies to most orders starting from the day we tell you it’s available for pickup; returns are for store credit only. (Full policy here.) You can “return” a book within this 30-day window by phone or email without picking it up.
We make three attempts to contact customers before considering a prepaid order to be abandoned property, so unless you’ve had three notices (please check your spam folder!), we still have the book. Once a month, we go through our prepaid pickup shelves looking for orders that weren’t picked up in over a month — e.g., in May, we look for books where the last communication happened in March or earlier — so the third notice will be approximately 4-6 months after the order comes in.
Unfortunately, we don’t have the shelf space to keep uncollected orders indefinitely, especially during the busy holiday season, so if we have made three contact attempts AND it has been a minimum of four months since our first contact attempt, we will donate uncollected books (except those individual books whose retail value is $50 or higher).
For orders that come in without prepayment, you will receive two notices before we shelve or return your order.
Do I get my money back if it turns out you can’t get my prepaid order?
Of course! Although sometimes there’s an unexpected rush on a book, most of the time we can tell from the outset that a book is going to be harder to get and will let you know so you can decide if you want to go ahead with the order. If it turns out that our distributor cancels the order, we automatically return the funds to your customer account and we will let you know about the cancellation as soon as we get the notice. Because we are unable to store credit card info (our system isn’t secure enough), we cannot refund to a credit card unless it’s present in the store.
It’s really hard for me to get to the store during your regular hours. What about home delivery?
Since December, 2021, we have restricted home delivery to people with a medical need to stay home, to ease the strain on our staff. It’s always fine to have a friend, neighbor, or family member collect your order.
Some examples of a medical need for home delivery: if you’re quarantined at home after a positive covid test or self-isolating on a doctor’s orders, on bedrest or have a new baby, if you’re living with chronic illness or are caretaking someone who is. Please read the full information about the logistical constraints on this service on the page describing our home delivery zone.