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...
Barnes and Noble Gets Social
Barnes & Noble has launched "My B&N". It is the latest feature in their every expanding arsenal of online offerings.With "My B&N" users can now "create their literary identity, connect and share insights with other readers, discover and rate new products, and keep up to date on events in their local Barnes & Noble store on BN.com" says Tom Burke, executive vice president of e-commerce for Barnes & Noble.com.This pure social networking play solidifies the rise and importance of book social networking in the book world and will likely have an impact on the other players in the space.Publisher's Weekly...
Kindle vs. Sony Reader : The E-Reader War has begun
Earlier this month Sony announced it was coming to America to take on the Kindle.Last Friday, Oprah Winfrey endorsed the Kindle.The folks at Sony are calling it the Reader Revolution. In a bold move they are essentially throwing in the towel in Japan, their home market, to focus their efforts here in America where they have been a bit surprised at how well their Reader is doing. Most of the Sony Reader brain trust will be relocating to America and they have unleashed thousands of Reader Revolutionaries throughout the country. These "revolutionaries" will appear at various retail outlets (think Target)...
wordia : Dictionary 3.0
Invite to the launch partyThere's a new dictionary in town. It's called wordia and they've set out to "create a new kind of dictionary - a democratic ‘visual dictionary’. A place where anyone with a video, webcam or mobile phone can define the words that matter to them in their life."wordia has partnered with HarperCollins, who will provide the textual dictionary, and YouTube who will host the video content.The site will be moderated with videos being both user-generated and professionally produced.wordia launced with 76,000 words, 120,000 definitions, and another 21,000 thesaurus entries.The launch party was held at Samuel Johnson's house....
The Future of Book Fairs: A Report from Santa Monica
[First, a note to self: Don't come up with any more crazy ideas about trying to do a book fair AND do something else - like, oh I don't know, post pictures and updates from the fair. Not a good idea. You will have neither the time nor the energy.]Last weekend's Santa Monica Book Fair has me - and many other dealers - thinking about the future of smaller regional fairs. The event itself was well-run and organized, and with over eighty dealers exhibiting from around the country was a sell-out. From that angle, the show was a success.Among the...