In another blaring act of AbeBooks.com’s systematic neglect of the booksellers who put the company on the map they announced today the release of BookHints. A book recommendation feature that utilizes their current hot property LibraryThing.
Basically it is the Amazon recommends technology with better visuals and instead of using an algorithm it uses the books in their users library to come up with suggestions.
With only 10% of the listings on Abebooks having been fitted with the BookHint technology why the press release now? Can you say Shelfari. It wasn’t more than a few days ago when the news of Amazon’s investment in Shelfari hit the newswire.
Welcome to the battle for dominance in the book social network world.
From the AbeBooks blog Reading Copy:
“So why have we introduced BookHints? Well, AbeBooks has never been website designed for browsing books. Traditionally, the majority of our customers know exactly the book they want to buy (usually something that’s become hard to find)”
And it is these hard to find books that thousand of booksellers have provided that made AbeBooks the #1 destination in that marketplace.
This initiative is a another clear signal that Abeooks has basically left the building when it comes to the initial core of booksellers that provided them the base inventory for their success. Not only have they chosen to abandon their core model to compete with Amazon but in the process they have raised the fees they charge to their booksellers by over 50% in the last year. They have taken all credit card processing for the website in house while charging their vendors over 5% per transaction. So, credit card processing has become a profit center for them much like many of the “booksellers” on their site who sell books for $1 and look to the shipping charges as a way to make some money.
Many ABAA booksellers staged a mini-protest and removed all their books from AbeBooks for a few days when these new charges went into effect.
Of the 6 recommendations given for their public example of BookHints most can be had for $1 with none of the books having the lowest priced copy available costing more than $3.25. You also can’t miss the small type “powered by LibraryThing”
Unfortunately, with the myriad of chances that have occurred over the last 10 years in the bookselling world, many booksellers are stuck with Abe until a new marketplace appears that can offer them similar exposure without the abuse. Google where are you?