It is official – Amazon has finally pulled the plug on zshops. After years of treating it like a bastard child who they wouldn’t let out of the house or better yet let anyone visit the house they finally pulled the plug
Z shops is where all the great books, ephemera and related material that was produced in the pre- ISBN era lived. Mind you, the ISBN system of identification was created in 1967 by David Whitaker and Emery Koltay so pretty much all original material published before 1967 was relegated to one’s Z shop or better yet Book Siberia.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do the math – let’s see Gutenburg started this whole thing back in 1447 when he invented the technology of printing with movable type – the ISBN system was created in 1967- 520 years later!
Over 50% of our inventory was in our Z shop and I am sure that number rings true for most traditional used, rare and out of print booksellers who sell on Amazon.
Basically, Amazon will be assigning each pre-ISBN item with a unique ASIN number which will allow the item to fit into the Marketplace structure. The two data fields they will use to assign this number are the date and binding fields of the items inventory record
The jury is still out on how effective the integration of the material into Marketplace will be.
One only has to look at the 19 options provided for the “binding” field by Amazon to once again be reminded that Amazon is not catering to the traditional used, rare and out of print bookseller.
Here are the 19 binding options:
Paperback
Hardcover
Audio CD
Board Book
Calendar
Cards
Audio Cassette
CD-Rom
Comic
Hardbound Comic
Diskette
Leatherbound
Map
Mass Market Paperback
Pamphlet
Rag Book
Ring Bound
Sheet Music
Spiral-Bound
Good luck accurately describing your books bound in 1/2 leather over marbled boards or your territorial imprint in original sewn wraps
To be continued…..