Are you after a copy of Erica Wilson? Mary Brown? Theresa Dillmonte? the older crewel books? Lace? Whitework?

I was just having a trawl through the vintage embroidery books on Etsy. I think the Dillmonte (hardback) was $12, and the Erica Wilson (several copies) $8. There's 822 books in the search today. One book on Assisi embroidery selling for over $80, so that one must be special. I don't think a lot of the sellers have a clue what they are selling as their descriptions are sometimes a bit vague.....

http://www.etsy.com/search/vintage?search_submit&q=embroidery+book&order=most_relevant&ship_to=US&view_type=gallery&noautofacet=1&page=1

 

Of course there are modern books as well - but I'd recommend searching by a particular embroidery subject in that case if you search under "All Items", rather than under the "Vintage" catagory where the link above will put you....or you'll be buried in results :-)

Searching on "embroidery book" in the category "All Items", just to survey the variety of books brought up (way too many pages to look through) I saw a couple of particularly good ones :

http://www.etsy.com/listing/70317327/the-needlework-of-mary-queen-of-scots?ref=sr_gallery_6&ga_search_submit&ga_search_query=historical+embroidery+book&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_ship_to=US&ga_search_type=all&ga_facet

1971 Edition of The Needlework of Mary Queen of Scotts - $US12.

I also saw 2 Helen Stevens (needlepainting) books selling for $8 each.