For New Customers

• Creating an account
• Privacy Policy
• Fast Books
• Found it Cheaper?
• Why Shop with us?

Placing an Order

• Your Cart
• Wishlist
• Canceling an Order
• Return Policy
• Damaged Book Return

Payment

• Korea Credit Cards
• Other Credit Cards
• Bank Transfers
• Pay in the Store
• Payment Times

Shipping

• Free Shipping
• Delivery Times
• One cart, items with different shipping times
• Requirements

Magazines

• Subscription Terms
• Shipping
• First Issue Will Arrive...
• Magazines on our Shelves

Used Books

• Returns
• Condition Rating
• Shipping Times
• Used Books Listed but not in our Store

About the Physical Store

• Read this Carefully
• Store Hours
• How to Get There

Contact Us

• Contact an English Speaker
• Contact a Korean Speaker

Searching

• Tips and Tricks

For New Customers

Creating an account with What the Book? is easy. Click on log in and on the right hand side please provide the correct information. You will be asked to provide your shipping information at your first order.

If you do not provide your real name or a full name What the Book? will not be responsible for any shipments that do not get to you.

Please click here for our privacy policy.

Fast Books are books that we currently have in stock at our retail store. For these books, two day shipping is available. There are some exceptions. If you order one Fast Book and another book in our online catalog (not a Fast Book), your order will ship out when both books are in Korea unless your order is spilt into two shipments.

Found it Cheaper? allows our customers to help us ensure that we have the best prices in South Korea. Simply fill in the amount and the name of the store and we will do our best to match or beat the price. Be aware of the following though: when submitting prices from North American websites, you must realize that they charge a shipping fee. One store, the shipping fee is $11.98 (approximately 12,000 Won) for the first book and $4.99 (5.000 Won) for each additional book. Thus, even though our book price may be slightly higher, the total price you pay with us is actually cheaper, since we do not charge for shipping. In these cases, we will not adjust our price to match theirs as we are in all actuality cheaper.

• Unbeatable Customer Service
• Over 1,000,000 Titles Available
• Free Delivery
• Many Payment Options
• Located in South Korea
• Various Shipping Options

Placing an Order

Click on the Add to Cart button and the item will be placed in your shopping cart. After that, click on the Shop More button to continue shopping or click on the Checkout button to complete your purchase.

The Wishlist is a feature that allows you to have a reminder of what books you would like to purchase in the future. Simply click on Wishlist instead of Cart and the books will be added to your Wishlist. When you are signed in, you can view your Wishlist by clicking on Wishlist located at the top of every page. Once you have decided to go ahead and purchase your Wishlist books, simply go to your Wishlist, click the Cart button and the book will be added to your cart. You must have signed up for an account for the Wishlist feature to work. Please note. If you add a book that is on sale to your Wishlist, it does not guarantee that you will get the book at the sale price. If we remove the discount from the book, it will be reflected in your Wishlist as well. If you put a book in your Wishlist that is not on sale and then it does go on sale, you get the sale price if you make the purchase during the sale period.

An order may be canceled without penalty anytime before we make the order for your book with our warehouse. Once an order is placed with our warehouse, we cannot cancel it. Please contact us directly if you would like to cancel a book.

Effective July 2, 2005, returns are no longer allowed unless the book is damaged (see Damaged Book Return).

We do our best to insure items are packed properly and securely. In the rare event that your product is damaged, you must do the following in order to get a replacement.

1. Telephone first to get authorization.
2. Ship post paid on delivery, or come to the store.

• What the Book? is not responsible for lost returns.
• Upon inspection and approval, we will reorder the item.
• Refunds or exchanges are not offered on damaged returns. You will get the same item(s). No Exceptions!

Shipping

In order to qualify for free shipping, orders with qualifying items must total more than 25,000 Won. If your order does not meet the minimum the shipping charge is 2,500 Won. If you pick up in the central-Seoul store there is never a shipping charge.

What the Book? will do our best to get your item(s) to you as quickly as possible. Shipping time in South Korea is expected in one of three time periods:

1. Within 2 business days. Fast Books--these are items currently in stock at our Seoul store.
2. Within 10 business days. These are items that our warehouse in America currently has in stock. This is updated several times a day.
3. 4-8 Weeks. These are items that are not in stock in our warehouse in America, but we are able to get the book for you. Items with this shipping time have a 2,500 Won handling fee and ship separetly.

Please note: 4-8 weeks is usually how long it takes to get items that are currently not located in our US warehouse. There may be circumstances beyond our control where an item may take longer to get than quoted. Unfortunately, we are unable to tell you exactly how long an overdue item will take to get as we may not have a direct relationship with that publisher. We can offer you a refund on the backordered title at any time as long as it is not currently on its way to Korea which would mean you would have it in a few days anyway. It can take up to 72 hours from the time you request a cancelation for us to confirm that we are able to cancel and refund the item(s).

A brief note about business days:
Our shipping time stated to you is in business days. We use business days because this allows us to give you a more accurate time than in regular days. Please be aware of the following:

1. A business day is Monday-Friday. It does not include Saturday or Sunday.
2. Holidays are also not considered a business day. This includes all Korean holidays (red days), as well as holidays in the U.S.A.

All the shipping times for each book can be found on the book information page, as well as in your cart.

There are three shipping times for all items found on the What the Book? website: two(2) business days, ten(10) business days, and 4-8 Weeks (28-56 days).

• Two business day items and ten business day items may be combined in order to meet the 25,000 Won free shipping minimum.

• If you have a two(2) business day item that costs 10,000 Won and an additional ten(10) business day item that costs 16,000 Won, both items will ship to you within ten business days at no charge.

• If you would like to have these items shipped separately, there will be a shipping charge of 2,500 Won to receive the two separate shipments: one within two business days and another one within ten business days.

• If you have a two(2) business day item (or multiple items) that total more than 25,000 Won and a ten(10) business day item (or multiple items) that total more than 25,000 Won, our system will automatically give you two free shipments, allowing you to get the two business day item(s) more quickly.

• Items with a shipping time of 4-8 weeks cannot be combined to receive free shipping. These items have a handling fee of 2,500 Won per item. We must charge this fee due to the extra steps involved and the additional costs incurred from obtaining these items from our suppliers. Stock status does change often so if you can wait a few weeks you can check if the shipping time has changed to ten or two business days. If this occurs, the nominal fee will be removed.

A phone number of a Korean speaking person must be available in order to get your item shipped. Our delivery company calls before all deliveries to confirm that someone is at the place of delivery or perhaps for directions. This is on a case by case basis and we cannot determine if the delivery man in your area will require a phone call.

If your order is returned to us by our shipping company (happens less than 1% of the time) you are required to make other arrangments and to pay for the second shipment. The easiest way to take care of the second shipment is to use the Korean postal service which will allow payment for postage at the time of delivery. They do not require a phone call, but What the Book? will not be responsible for any lost shipments made through the Korean postal service.

If your order totals more than 25,000 Won no matter what it contains you get one free shipment.

Magazines

Single Copy Magazines-- What the Book? now offers single copies for purchase online. A magazine counts as one book in order to meet the free shipping minimum and magazines have a two business day shipping time. You can order one magazine and one book and if the two total more than 18,000 Won shipping is free. Please note, that we ship by the latest shipping. For more information on shipping times please click here.

Subscription Terms

How to subscribe--Simply click on the add to cart button located on the magazine's page. Once the ordering processes is complete we place the order with our supplier.

Length of subscription-- Subscriptions are sold in periods of twelve months. Some titles come out every month, while others come out quarterly (every four months). Please refer to each magazine's individual page on our site to see how often the title you wish to purchase comes out. Your subscription period starts when you get your first issue, not when you placed your order (you get an entire year's worth of issues). Special editions may not be included in your subscription, but you can place a seperate order for the special edition(s).

Canceling a subscription--You can't do it. Once an order has been placed and paid for, you must continue with the entire subscription. You are more than welcome to give the subscription to someone else. Please see address change and transfers below.

Time from order to first issue--Once your order has been placed and payment completed your order will enter our purchasing cycle. For weekly magazines, It normally takes one to six weeks for you to get your first title in the mail. For monthly magazines it normally takes one to eight weeks. Magazines that come out every other month it normally takes up one to 12 weeks. Magazines that come out quarterly normally take one to 24 weeks. Magazines with a frequency more than mentioned above can take up to year. It all depends on the printing cycle (see next paragraph to learn how the printing cycle affects your order).

Magazines are published on what is called a printing cycle. The publishers only print the amount needed, no more no less. When you place an order we then place the order with our supplier and we enter the printing cycle. Some publisher's printing cycles are long, other are short. Other companies will tell you it will take a minimum of six weeks, but as we will pull your first issue from our arriving store stock we are sometimes able to cut this down to only a week or two. Please click here to see a list of magazines that hit the What the Book? shelves every month.

Rest assured, we will do everything we possibly can to get your magazines to you as quickly as possible. If you have not recieved your first title within the time mentioned above, please contact us.

Your magazine subscription starts when the next issue arrives to our store. Let's say you place an order for Cosmopolitan on April 5th and it normally arrives at our store on the 1st of every month, you will not receive your first issue until the following month (in this case May, but the publisher may title the issue "June") because you placed your order four days after that issue arrived at our store. There are no exceptions to this rule.

Address change and transfers--You may transfer your subscription to someone else and change the address but the email address of the subscription cannot change. Only communication from the email address can change the receivers name or shipping address. For any changes please contact us at help*whatthebook.com (replace the * with an @).

Subscription as a gift--If you would like to give a subscription as a gift, please order and pay just like you would if you were ordering for yourself. Then send us an email at help*whatthebook.com (replace the * with an @) for a name and address change. We will then notify you that the change has been made.

Ordering more than one copy--If you would like to have more than one copy sent to a single address, please contact us.

Issues lost due to no fault of subscriber-- In the unlikey event of a lost or damaged issue during international transit, will we will extend your subscription to make up for the missing issue. We will notify you by email if this occurs.

Shipping

Free Shipping--When ordering single issues, each copy of a magazine is counted (as books do) to qualify for free shipping. For subscriptions, the price of shipment of each issue is included in the subscription fee. What the Book? will not be responsible for issues that are lost in the Korean mail. If you feel your mailbox is not secure, please contact us and we can arrange registered mail service for a small fee.

In store pick up--You may also elect to pick up your magazine in our store. You will be notified by email each time an issue arrives.

Used Books

Used books purchased online are not returnable for any reason. If you are a bit reluctant in buying a used book online because of the condition it may be in, then don't do it. All Fast Used Books available online are also available in our store.

Used books are rated in three categories:

Like New: These books may have a slight mark on them or a slight bump on it. Otherwise the book is in an unread condition.

Very Good: These books are books that have clearly been read before but still in very good condition.

Good: These books are a bit on the worn side but the binding and all the pages are still intact.

The books that we sell online are the best used books available in our store. Our online used inventory is less than 1% of the actual books we have in our store. We take care to make sure that only quality condition books are available online.

If your order only consists of Fast Used Books you can expect them to arrive in two business days. If you order used book(s) and new book(s) in one order, your books will arrive in the latest shipping time of all your books unless you choose seeparate shipments or if you qualify for two free separete shipments.

For example:

One used book = 2 business days.

One new book = 10 business days.

Entire order will arrive in 10 business days unless you choose to have the items ship separetly.

There are used books that are listed that have a shipping time of within ten business days. This books are not currently stocked on our shelves in our store but in one of our warehouses in North America. Only used books that are Fast Used Books are currently on our shelves.

About the Physical Store

We only stock a small number of the best selling new books and magazines here at the store. Our online site consists of over 1,000,000 titles and we cannot possibly stock that many titles in our store. Only books with a two business day shipping time are currently at the store. Magazines located here arrive at our store every month.

Click here for a map to our store.

Contact Us