Buying books at Amazon

This is the first time I'm going to try Amazon and I have some questions on it. I will be glad if some one can answer them.
a) How reliable is Amazon, in terms of delivery? Can I trust on their 'Shipping Time'? (I will be leaving US in another 2 weeks, and I don't want to get into trouble by asking them later to re-ship the books to my Indian address)
b) Is it reliable to buy used books on Amazon?
And now some questions related to JavaRanch-Amazon kickback
c) I know that JavaRanch gets a kickback from Amazon if I buy a book after clicking on some link at JavaRanch. Is it true for non-technical books also?
d) I'm planning to buy around 10-20 books. I have links for some of them here and not for the others. So, if I click on a link to Book1 and then in Amazon, I select Book2, will JavaRanch gets benefited for both the books or only the first one?
e) What if I provide the links for all the books here and then purchase them by clicking on those links? Is it okay to do so? Or is it a violation of something?
f) Is there a difference between buying single books against placing bulk orders (like some discounts)? In that case, if I do what I mentioned in (e), I will be losing the benefit. Is there a better way to give a link pointing to multiple books?

a) How reliable is Amazon, in terms of delivery? Can I trust on their 'Shipping Time'? (I will be leaving US in another 2 weeks, and I don't want to get into trouble by asking them later to re-ship the books to my Indian address)

Extremely reliable, in my experience, and I've bought literally hundreds of books from them.

b) Is it reliable to buy used books on Amazon?

The used books come from 3rd parties, and Amazon provides some of the services, but ultimately the reliability depends on the 3rd party. I've bought exactly two used books and they both came on time and everything worked fine.

c) I know that JavaRanch gets a kickback from Amazon if I buy a book after clicking on some link at JavaRanch. Is it true for non-technical books also?
d) I'm planning to buy around 10-20 books. I have links for some of them here and not for the others. So, if I click on a link to Book1 and then in Amazon, I select Book2, will JavaRanch gets benefited for both the books or only the first one?
e) What if I provide the links for all the books here and then purchase them by clicking on those links? Is it okay to do so? Or is it a violation of something?
f) Is there a difference between buying single books against placing bulk orders (like some discounts)? In that case, if I do what I mentioned in (e), I will be losing the benefit. Is there a better way to give a link pointing to multiple books?

The terms of service for the Associates program actually prohibit you from discussing this sort of stuff, but if you're really curious it's very easy to join as an associate yourself, and then read the information!
Suffice to say that clicking on an Amazon link from JavaRanch and then buying 20 books all at once would be a nice thing to do.

[EFH]: Suffice to say that clicking on an Amazon link from JavaRanch and then buying 20 books all at once would be a nice thing to do.
Of course, if you click on the link in Ernest's signature, the money might go somewhere slightly different.

Regarding shipping, I did once order something that was listed as shipping in 3-5 weeks, which after three weeks Amazon decided they really should hve listed it as out of stock instead, so they canceled that item from the order. But if you order stuff that's in stock, or listed as 1-2 days, there should be no trouble.
[ November 11, 2003: Message edited by: Jim Yingst ]

c) I know that JavaRanch gets a kickback from Amazon if I buy a book after clicking on some link at JavaRanch. Is it true for non-technical books also?
If you use an amazon link from JavaRanch to buy things at JavaRanch then JavaRanch gets a percentage. On books that you click directly to, it's 15%. Anything else is 5% except for the used stuff which is 2.5%.
d) I'm planning to buy around 10-20 books. I have links for some of them here and not for the others. So, if I click on a link to Book1 and then in Amazon, I select Book2, will JavaRanch gets benefited for both the books or only the first one?
Everything.
e) What if I provide the links for all the books here and then purchase them by clicking on those links? Is it okay to do so? Or is it a violation of something?
It would be naughty and JavaRanch would get 15% for every book you did it with. Since you are under no contract with amazon they would not punish you or anything and since we told you not to "stop, don't do it" then we wouldn't get in trouble either.
f) Is there a difference between buying single books against placing bulk orders (like some discounts)? In that case, if I do what I mentioned in (e), I will be losing the benefit. Is there a better way to give a link pointing to multiple books?
There is no difference.

Of course, if you click on the link in Ernest's signature, the money might go somewhere slightly different.

Yeah, I should change that back. It was just an experiment to see what the statistics looked like, because I'd seen other people do it. Now I know.
Here, I'm changing it back right now... done.

Thanks everybody for the valuable comments. I checked amazon, but sadly most of the books I was searching for are marked "out of stock"

But managed to buy almost everything at a near by 'Used book store', at a very reasonable price ($150 for 16 books)