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Online
News Archive - another chance to read about
the ever-changing face of online bookselling. 08.02.07. According
to Biblio's latest newsletter, Biblion.co.uk will soon be offering customer credit
card processing through the site, but no date has been set. Add a comment 25.01.07.
Alibris has named three public libraries as the co-winners of the 2007 Alibris
Collection Award. This is the fourth consecutive year that Alibris has provided
$3,000 in books to help supply under-funded libraries with much-needed materials
... more
Add a comment 04.01.07.
Ebay have announced increases (or 'adjustments' as they euphemistically refer
to them) in listing fees, which will take effect from the end of the month ...
more
Add a comment 18.11.06.
Alibris has launched its UK Web site and a drive to expand into international
book markets. Alibris UK
"provides convenient access to more than 60 million new, out-of-print, rare,
and second-hand books to English-speaking consumers throughout the United Kingdom
and sixteen countries in Europe" ... more
Add a comment 17.10.06.
Rett Morran closed Bookavenue.com at the beginning of the month, after an 8 year
run. While it might be resurrected in the future, right now they don't have any
plans to restart operations. Add a comment 16.10.06.
Alibris have announced that they will launch a Web site for customers in the United
Kingdom and Europe this November. Priced in the local currency, books will be
shipped directly to customers in the UK and Europe, and the "uplift"
on inventory prices will be "significantly reduced". Add a comment 28.09.06.
UKBookWorld has launched BookFiles - downloadable database files which contain
details of hundreds or thousands of old, rare and out-of-print books in specialist
subject-areas offered for sale by British booksellers ... more
Add a comment 11.09.06.
In common with many booksellers, NONE of our books were to be seen on ABE over
the weekend. No explanation, no apology, no sales! However, you can
read a long interview with ABE's Director of Sales, Sue Conners - in which she
doesn't address any of these issues - here
Add a comment 31.08.06.
Biblio.com have announced a number of improvements to their Rare
Book Room including larger images, improved "product" display, and
monthly "product" features. Add a comment 17.08.06.
Biblion Ltd., the British based second hand book dealer marketplace announced
strong growth in the first month with the new web site platform in place ... more Add
a comment 15.08.06.
Angry eBay sellers are threatening to boycott the UK auction site today in protest
at changes introduced to attract more buyers ... more Add
a comment 01.08.06.
BookFinder used a recent
economics paper entitled Plus
Shipping and Handling, to guide its decision to display all prices as postpaid. Add
a comment 05.07.06.
The Biblion website has
been relaunched. In a statement, Biblio.com
said that they will manage the site, while Biblion Ltd. staff will maintain marketing
and PR relations in the UK and Europe ... more Add
a comment
Biblion
have made some changes to their web site but not enough - the site is still slow
to load an older browsers and searches are even slower. Effectively they are alienating
much of their customer base and as a prospective customer I for one will not be
using them.
Give
me abebooks anyday - many of their contributors may be outside the UK but at least
they have got their act together webwise and understand the need to test their
site against all browsers and provide their customers with a good experience.
It is about time Biblion got out of the web market
place altogether or got some professional help to manage their web operations.
- Keith Thompson. 03.07.06.
The book price comparison site BookFinder
has just completed a makeover, which includes adding support for shipping prices,
and a de-cluttered appearance ... more
Add a comment 24.06.06.
From August 21st, the way postage is priced will change to take into account size
as well as weight. The Royal Mail has created a size guide to help you see how
your mail will be priced in the future. You can order your free size guide here. Add
a comment 27.05.06.
There seems to be general
agreement amongst the booksellers who attended ABE's three regional 'Roundtables'
that, whilst the company was obviously shocked by the secondhand book trades reaction
to it's most recent edict, nothing will change
Abe
seems determined to concentrate on the new book market despite the evidence of
their own marketing survey, which apparently showed that the majority of people
visiting the site were looking for secondhand, out of print and rare books ... Add
a comment
Read comments 09.05.06.
Online bookselling
marketplace Alibris has been acquired by Oak Hill Capital Partners for an undisclosed
sum ... more Add
a comment 08.05.06.
One of the features
of the Booksatpbfa
site is their periodic Virtual Book Fairs, the most recent of which runs until
the 28th of May. This time the theme is "The
History of Almost Everything" and each of the titles is provided with
an image. Add a comment 13.04.06.
Stuart Manley and David Anderson have been trying to monitor the effects of the
ABE April Fool's Day boycott. The figures they have quoted today on the BookFinder
Insider list suggests that the boycott has had little or no effect. David
thinks that there may have been an 8% drop on April 2nd, which had just about
recovered by today, Whilst Stuart detected little change. Add a comment 07.04.06.
From today's Biblio press release: "Biblio.com, one of the world's largest
marketplaces for used, rare, and out-of-print books, and Biblion Ltd., the foremost
British based dealer marketplace announced today their mutual decision to work
together to redevelop the current Biblion Ltd. online strategy" ... more Add
a comment Whilst
it's too early for reliable figures, anecdotal evidence suggests that perhaps
8% of ABE's dealers responded to calls from the PBFA
and ABA for them to remove
their books from it's database, in protest against recent changes.
What
impact this may have had remains unclear, and there still seems to be little agreement
within the trade as to what to do next. Add
a comment
The PBFA
have joined the ABA in urging
their members to withdraw their books for "at least three days" from
ABE's site in protest at their decision to process all credit
card payments. Quite what this short protest will achieve remains to
be seen. However, I'm not the first to observe that April 1st is perhaps an unfortunate
choice of date to start a protest ... Add
a comment
Hard on the heels
of ABE's credit card announcement, I received the
following from the marketing director at Alibris:
'Alibris
will be making significant changes in 2006 that will allow UK sellers to effectively
sell and profit on our platform. I thought it may be of interest to you and your
readers in light of recent changes at ABE
We understand
that our current system doesn’t work for many UK sellers. However, once these
changes are complete, we believe Alibris will provide the same type of service
to UK sellers as we do to our North American sellers.'
As
they say, watch this space. Add
a comment ABE's
announcement that from April 2006 they will process all credit card transactions,
will further restrict customer contact and cost many dealers an extra 3.5% of
every sale made through ABE.
At its recent 'Summit'
ABE apparently made it clear that it sees Amazon as the competition and is determined
to change its business model accordingly. Add
a comment
Biblio.com
announce new billing options for independent sellers beginning March 1st 2006.
Add a comment The
Biblion site is to close
indefinitely. Leo Harrison, director of Biblion Ltd emailed the wesite's dealers
on Wednesday to tell them that the site will close on Friday January 26.
The state of the site's five year old servers are said to be the cause of the
problems they have been experiencing. It was therefore decided that: 'the best
course of action in the short term is to close the site temporarily, whilst we
investigate the full extent of the options ahead of us.' A
number of people have written to us complaining that most of the time the UK site,
Biblion, seems to be either
unavailable, broken or so slow as to be unusable.
These
comments seem to be made more in sorrow than anger, as many like to support a
UK site, so I will do my best to contact them an find out what's happening.
If
you want to continue to buy British, you could try ibooknet
and UKBookWorld. Abebooks.com,
the world's largest online marketplace for new and used books, has acquired BookFinder.com
- the leading price comparison shopping service dedicated to books...more
Add a comment "These
(online) auctions are continuing to attract increasing international interest,
and overseas book dealers and collectors are now making up (a considerable) percentage
of our clients," says Paul Mills, a director of AuctionExplorer...more
Add a comment Selling
books online - book listing services vs. eBay...more
Add a comment Stuart
Manley of Barter Books
has written "A
Comprehensive Guide to Book Listing Sites", for the IOBA Standard, the
newsletter of the Independent
Online Booksellers Association. Add a comment After
three years of development and a successful beta run, Indaba Systems of San Francisco,
has announced the launch of their debut software for August 16th. A powerful tool
for online booksellers, Indaba is a complete suite of functions that manages inventory
across twelve marketplaces, more than any other software on the market today...more launched
in in February 2003, Biblio.com
entered a market dominated by several major companies, as well as more than a
dozen smaller competitors.
With substantial growth
in the last two years, Biblio.com has gone from a fledgling company to become
the third largest site of its kind in the world.
The
website currently offers 20 million titles from 2850 independent booksellers in
24 countries. Biblio
has announced a new strategic
partnership with BiblioQuest International, owner BibliOZ.com, Australia's
leading search service. Bibliology
to close at the end of April. In an email to subscribers, Tom Brio said:
" www.bibliology.com
was our baby. You just don't know how much it hurts that we had to take the decision
to close but in the end commercial sense has to prevail over ones love for the
baby". Add
a comment In
January, eBay announced steep fee increases, which took effect last month, prompting
sellers to post caustic comments on community bulletin boards both on and off
the company's Web site. Petitions have been circulated, sellers have debated an
eBay boycott and those unhappy with the company seem evenly split over whether
"FeeBay" or "GreedBay" is the most apt epithet for it...more
Add a comment Collectors
Book Market launches. "Unlike current fixed price bookselling sites and large
auction venues, Collectors Book Market (CBM) is focused on providing the specific
features that collectible book buyers and sellers value," said Peter Thomas, the
site's originator and technical director. "These include much better search and
browse options, seller accountability, and clear references for first edition
and signed books offered for sale"...more
Add a comment. On
November 16th ChooseBooks was acquired by mediatins AG, an independent German
multimedia corporation and a parent company of ZVAB.com, Antiquarian Book Listing
service, a European market leader with a dominant position in Central Europe.
According to Choosebooks, it's all good news, but
it remains to be seen how much their business model and fees will change under
new ownership. BookFinder.com
Journal reports that German media conglomerate Mediantis AG has announced
that it's agreed to acquire an unnamed American used book listings service with
2000 booksellers and over a million titles. Mediantis is the parent company of
ZVAB, and has a significant presence in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Meanwhile...the
ChooseBooks
site is "undergoing major restructuring and will be down for hardware upgrading
and maintenance'. Abebooks
announces the acquisition of Iberlibro.com and a new partnership with renowned
Spanish bookstore chain Casa del Libro...more ChooseBooks
are "happy to announce that we have entered into serious negotiations with
one potential partner and consequently will NOT be closing on October 22."
BookPursuit,
another new book listing website, this time based in the Netherlands, has launched
this month. The
co-founder of Abebooks.com, the world's largest Internet site for new, used, rare
and antique books, has thrown off the virtual world for a chance to breathe in
the aged air, finger 100-year-old binding and leaf through rare tomes once again...more The
co-founder of Abebooks.com, the world's largest Internet site for new, used, rare
and antique books, has thrown off the virtual world for a chance to breathe in
the aged air, finger 100-year-old binding and leaf through rare tomes once again...more Choosebooks
the US based book listing site will close their site on October 22nd. Failure
to attract additional investment was the reason given in an e-mail to their sellers. In
an industry were book listing site closures are the norm, the launch a new one
is certain to raise a few eyebrows.
Booksatpbfa,
as the name suggests is the long awaited site for PBFA (Provincial Book Fairs
Association) members, the UK based association that claims to be the largest of
its kind in the world.
Selling on the site is restricted
to PBFA members, who are bound by their code of conduct, and this, together with
the absence of listings bloated by penny sellers, is seen as the site's major
attraction to book buyers.
Members must sign up for
a minimum of 12 months, which will cost £282 (instalments available), and there
are currently about fifty members listing their stock. TBG. Add a comment.
Moira Gunn of Tech Nation
speaks with Marty Manley, the President and CEO of Alibris. Listen to how their
effort to sell used, out-of-print and hard-to-find books online delivered on its
promise, and successfully made it through the dot-com bust...more
You need to have Real
Player installed to listen to this interview. In
an announcement earlier this summer, Half.com stated that they would be closing
on October 14, 2004. They have decided NOT to go forward with this plan and will
keep Half.com open indefinitely...more Abebooks.com
today (17.09.04) announced that textbook sales for the month of August were nearly
400% higher than in August 2003...more MyOwnBookshop
which launched a little over a year ago has folded. No explanation, they just
pulled the plug... The
Beta Test of the AB Bookman/Collectors Book Market book
auction site will begin on Tuesday, July 6th. During this Beta test, there
will be no fees charged for any reason, but ALL for sale items will be REAL listings
and all transactions and bids must be honored. Agitar
Software announced that Abebooks has selected Agitar's products and services to
improve the functionality, performance, and security of its e-commerce transaction
system...more Alibris
Inc. pulled its initial public offering - which could have raised $35 million
- on the eve of its planned debut on Friday...more ABE
finds it necessary to justify it's decision to allow charity bookshops to list
their books one it's database...more "There's
never been a time as wonderful as today for the book buyer," said Anirvan Chatterjee,
founder and chief executive officer of Bookfinder.com...more
Many booksellers
are concerned about the domination of the internet marketplace by the three A's
(ABE, Alibris & Amazon). Stuart Manley of Barter Books has some suggestions...more Hear
Sir Roger Moore, renowned actor and dedicated UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, launch
ILAB's online Virtual Celebration of the Book.
This special event will open on May 19, 2004 at 6:00pm Amsterdam time, 12:00 noon
Eastern daylight time. Abebooks
- Media Correction. The press release incorrectly stated that 79% of all online
used book sales occur on Abebooks.com. The correct percentage of online used book
sales that occur on Abebooks.com is 39%...more Website
for independent booksellers donates profits from Oprah book pick "The Heart is
a Lonely Hunter" to Oprah's Angel Network charity...more ILAB
(International League of Antiquarian Booksellers) commemorates it's 57th birthday
with a program of events including a virtual auction to benefit Unicef, a non-profit
organization helping children in need around the world...more Oxfam
has joined forces with a web-based American second-hand books retailer ABE to
sell books online...more
Alibris has filed papers
to raise as much as $25 million in an initial public offering...more | 
