Leave it to Abebooks to come up with yet another way to alienate the core group of booksellers that their company was built on.I blogged about this rating system and it's utter disregard for the integrity of bookselling while it was in beta mode.Here is a snippet:AbeBooks is working on a rating system for booksellers based on the star rating systems that appear at other online marketplaces. Unfortunately, this bookseller rating system has nothing to do with bookselling and everything to do with order fulfillment. The amount of stars you earn is based exclusively on your order fulfillment percentage. Nothing...
The Shelfari Climb
The big news in the book social networking world this week was Shelfari's announcement that it has created a branded application for Facebook.Facebook is the don of social networking sites and for Shelfari to implant their application in their playing field is a huge step in gaining market share.The recent Publisher's Weekly's article on book social networking sites placedShelfari a distant third in the marketplace behind Goodreads.com and way behind Librarything who were first in.This deal will close the gap considerably. Since the press release Shelfari has already seen record traffic and a record amount of new registrations.And while Shelfari...
Research Reveals AbeBooks Driving Booksellers Crazy
Maybe that should have been the title of their latest press release.While most of the bookselling trade is going nuts over AbeBooks' new 'bookseller rating' system, which is running in beta version right now, they release this news flash:Research Reveals Baby Boomers Drive Online Used Bookselling in USBefore I get to that here is a bit about the current skirmish between the booksellers in the ABAA and AbeBooks.AbeBooks is working on a rating system for booksellers based on the star rating systems that appear at other online marketplaces. Unfortunately, this bookseller rating system has nothing to do with bookselling and...
Wounded Booksellers Kicked by U. S. Post Office
The U.S. Post Office doing away with surface mail is a no-brainer. Only 2.7% of all international mail is sent via surface mail (or sea-mail as it should be called since the mail spends most of its time in cargo ships on the high seas). The "slow boat to china" routine doesn't really mesh with the new wired world.The problem is:The 2.7% is made up of almost 100% of todays independent booksellers. Removing the primary option for delivery of your overseas orders cannot be a good thing. Of course these changes do not impact the major aggregators like Amazon who...
Can You Take a BookHint? AbeBooks Does It Again
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...