Americana Exchange Monthly reported recently on a new program Alibris will be offering most of its sellers, “Alibris Inventory Demand.” The service:
offers three types of data. Foremost is their historical sales data, which provides actual sales prices transacted on the Alibris and Alibris partner sites (such as Borders Marketplace). Next, it provides current pricing data, such as highest, lowest and average prices currently listed, along with the number of copies for sale. Finally, they provide what they call the “Alibris Sales Index,” which rates the likelihood of an item being sold.
As Alibris explained in their press release:
Utilizing such detailed, valuable information will make sellers more likely to sell on Alibris, Alibris U.K., Alibris for Libraries, and the company’s business-partner sites. Initial feedback from sellers has been extremely positive, with many sellers finding that they can list certain items for an even higher price than they had suspected, while others have found that they may have been pricing some items higher than the market appetite for that item.
I have mixed feelings about this development. On the one hand, I expect I will occasionally find this a useful service. And I’m sure it will do largely what Alibris describes above – increase their turnover and sales, help some sellers reap higher prices, and sometimes help consumers by discouraging some “Hail Mary” pricing on the part of overly-eager sellers. Admittedly, these would be positive developments.
On the other, I am concerned it will further contribute to the already-accelerating amateurization of the book trade. Already the idea of “looking it up on ABE” fosters the confusion of information for knowledge and data for experience. And to the extent this encourages more people to become “book dealers” by sustaining the illusion that anyone can be a bookseller, I worry it will work to the detriment of the trade as a whole – both consumers and professionals.
It is also unclear exactly what data will be offered. If full descriptions are archived and made available (something I would be staunchly against), Alibris may find themselves running afoul of copyright laws. Nonetheless, it’s impossible to stop the march of technology. I would expect ABE to roll out a similar feature next, and with their greater database of sales records (now including those of Amazon), look for them to offer it as a premium service.