A Want is a book request that you place on the Abebooks.co.uk system. Your Want request is matched daily against the book listings in all Abebooks databases to see if any of our Booksellers have listed a book that matches your Want criteria.

You can have the Want request search the database on some or all of the following information:

• Author
• Title
• Publisher
  
• Keywords
• Binding
  
• Attributes - first edition, signed copy, dust jacket

If a match is found between your Want and a book in a Bookseller's inventory, you will receive an e-mail to notify you that your Want has been found. The e-mail will contain the book details, information on the Bookseller, and instructions on how to buy the book(s).

Your Wants page is accessed from Your Account menu where Wants are created, updated and managed.

Note: you will need to first create a book buyer's account and Sign-On with your e-mail address and password to create and manage your Want list.

The "List and Maintain Your Wants" page allows you to access and manage your Want lists. Here you can:

• Search for a book
  
• Search your existing Wants
  
• Create new Wants
  
• View your existing Wants
  
• Update or delete your existing Wants

Access the page using the following steps:

1) Sign on with your e-mail address and your password at the Sign-On page. This will take you to "Your Account" page

2) Click [Your Wants]. This will take you to the "Your Wants" page

3) Click [List and Update Your Wants]. This will take you to the "List and Maintain Your Wants" page

To add a Want:

1) Click [Add new wants to your want inventory] to begin the process of adding a Want. This will take you to the "Add a Want" page

2) Enter as much information as possible in the fields below about the book you are looking for:

• Author - name
  
• Title - name
  
• Publisher - name, do not enter the year or other publishing information
  
• Keywords - words that describe the content of the book
  
• Binding - pick from the drop-down list e.g. hard cover
  
• Attributes - first edition, signed copy, dust jacket
  
• Comments- add comments about the Want that you would like the Bookseller to see
  
• Your Want ID - any number that you may want to use as an index to help you keep track of your Want e.g. 2002-07-25 to show the date you created your Want. If left blank, a Want ID will be automatically generated by our system
  
• Secret Information - personal notes about your Want that can only be viewed by you when you manage your Wants e.g. Birthday gift for Mom

3) Click on the [Add] button and see that the Want has been successfully created

Booksellers and other members can also view your anonymous Wants. They can see that someone is looking for a particular title but they don't know who has posted the Want. This gives our Booksellers an opportunity to list a book that you are seeking, while still protecting your privacy.

You can view your Wants from the table on the "List and Maintain Your Wants" page. The table displays the following information for each Want:

• Author
  
• Title
  
• Publisher
  
• Keywords
  
• Binding
  
• Attributes
  
• Want ID
  
• Matches - lists any matches that have been made on your Want

The following tools in the table allow you to manage each Want record:

• Update - modify the content of your Want
  
• Del - delete your Want
  
• Delete All Matches - deletes all matches associated with a Want
  
• Search - search the database for your Want

1) Click on the [Upd] link in the row of the Want record that you would like to modify

2) Add or change the information as required

3) Click on the [Update] button located at bottom of the page

The Want information is now updated.

If you want to remove your Want you can do so from the Wants table.

1) Click on the [Del] link in the row of the Want record that you would like to remove

2) Confirm that this is the Want to would like to delete

3) Click on the [Yes, delete this Want] button located at bottom of the page

The Want information is now deleted.

There are two different "wild card" operators that you can use to help in your Want matching process.

Trailing wildcards (* 'asterisk') are used to expand a search and have the meaning 'Include everything'. The asterisk can be used in any Want field when you may not be sure of the exact title or author of a book.

Example: you could enter "Ste* King" in the Author field if you are unsure of whether the spelling is "Stephen King" or "Steven King".

Tilde symbol (~) (usually in the upper left area of a computer keyboard) signifies the expression "not". The tilde has the opposite function of the wildcard in that it allows you to refine your Want search. You can exclude certain books that contain a specific word by entering that word preceded by a tilde. This is especially useful if you are inundated with book matches.

Example: a tilde in the title filed for "Sailing Ships ~North Atlantic" will find books without the word "North" in the title, i.e. "Sailing Ships of the Atlantic"

Note: Wildcards do not work in the middle of a word, as in "Ste*n". Also, we do not recommend that you enter Wants with wildcards of any less than three letters. A want match for "St*" could return thousands of matches, putting an unnecessary strain on the search engine.

It is important to remember that Abebooks.co.uk finds books based on the exact spellings that you have typed in your Want request. If you find that your Want is not returning the number of matches that you expected, double-check the spelling of the words that you have typed in all fields (title, author, etc.).

While it is very important to spell names and titles correctly, the search system is very forgiving with regards to capitalization and punctuation. You can enter your want words in upper, lower, or mixed case and it will make no difference to your matching results. The search engine also ignores punctuation. This rule also applies to book titles in languages other than English. Any accents or special characters in a word will be ignored. Words such as "the" or "it" are also ignored and match results are unaffected by their inclusion.

Example 1: "Sophie's World" will generate the same results as "Sophies World"

Example 2: "man eaters kumaon" will receive the same results as "Man-Eaters of Kumaon"