BookFinder.com Journal

New online bookseller case study

The Oregon Mail Tribune is running a piece on new online bookseller Teresa Safay's first year in business. Her story's pretty typical of the new booksellers coming into the industry over the past several years.

Posted by Anirvan

Why Half.com is being shuttered

There are a number of reasons why Half.com's being shut down and pulled back into the eBay brand (to live on as the oddly named The Half Zone).

Branding's clearly one of these reasons. Writes weblogger Deb:

I have boxes of used elementary to junior high level textbooks I'd like to sell. What do you think is my best option...selling them on Ebay or at Amazon's Half.com? Are there online stores that only deal in used textbooks that might be more suitable? [Source]

Amazon Marketplace has out-Halved Half.com, enough so that it can occasionally cause reasonable consumers to mix the two brands up. eBay's brand anxiety is understandable.

If you're reading this, can you help Deb out by offering her some advice on where she can sell 100 elementary to junior high school level textbooks?

Posted by Anirvan

Browser stats

We've been spending some time evaluating the way the BookFinder.com site works in light of the mix of web browsers that our users use. Basic web log analysis stuff. For a long time, BookFinder.com users tended to lag well behind the general Internet population with respect to adoption of newer web browsers.

It looks like users have finally caught up. 73% of our users are currently using Internet Explorer 6, 15% are using IE 5, 8% are using Mozilla and other Gecko-based browsers, and 2% are using Safari. Netscape 4 and IE 4 take up most of the remaining 3%. (Numbers don't add up 100% due to rounding.)

It's nice to see our users' browser preferences shifting toward the mainstream. I remember the days when WebTV made up about 6% of our users; we ended up doing quite a bit of browser-specific HTML coding to get WebTV users' search experiences working right.

As for myself, I've always been fairly web browser agnostic. It's not uncommon for me to use three different web browsers on the same computer over the course of a day. My web browsers of choice? I use Safari at work, Camino (a Mozilla derivative) at home, and Links when I'm on a Unix command line.

[Now Reading: Swami and Friends by R.K. Narayan]

Posted by Anirvan

Australia/NZ market roundup

Abebooks just launched two new local subsites targeted towards Australia and New Zealand: Abebooks.co.au and Abebooks.co.nz. Both sites redirect customers to part of the main Abebooks site.

The two other regional players I know of are Biblioz and Books & Collectibles.

Biblioz is produced by Australia-based BiblioQuest International. Biblioz's searchable inventory contains a co-branded subset of the Abebooks catalog.

Books & Collectibles is the real deal -- an Australian listings service, with almost 200 mid- to high-end dealers, mostly Australian. BookFinder.com's been searching them since October 2002.

And yes, that's pretty much about all I know about the Australia and New Zealand online used book markets...

Posted by Anirvan

Rare Penguins turn up on Abebooks

The European book world was in a bit of a tizzy around the collection of 100,000 rare books from the Penguin publishing archives recently sold to Half Price Books (a Dallas-based low end American used bookstore chain).

From book2book:

The collection includes a copy of Aku-Aku signed by its author, Thor Heyerdahl, the Norwegian ethnologist and adventurer who led the Kon-Tiki expedition in 1947. The book is dedicated to Sir Allen Lane, who founded Penguin in the 1930s. A senior publishing figure said: "If this is so, it is a major cultural crime."

Half Price Books sells some of their more collectible titles on Abebooks -- which may be why Abebooks is running a special feature about the collection, currently being promoted on their home page.

Posted by Anirvan

Under attack, publishers praise used books

The American Association of Publishers has been working to justify the high cost of new textbooks. They've been working to make clear to the press that the sale of used books doesn't result in the (deserving) publisher or author getting a cut.

(Of course they don't mention that architects don't get a cut when their buildings are resold, or that Microsoft doesn't get a cut when you resell your boxed copy of Windows XP to a friend.)

It's unsurprising that the AAP may not be a big supporter of the used book trade.

So I was surprised to read AAP President Pat Schroeder's statement to CNN/Money when asked whether the rising cost of books is a factor in declining American reading rates:

Former Colorado Rep. Pat Schroeder, who now heads the AAP, says book price increases didn't cause the reading decline. A book "is very high value," she argues. "It gives hours of pleasure and can be passed on to others." [Source]

It's nice to see that when the American publishing industry is under attack, their trade association is happy to claim that being able to share books (without subsequent readers having to pay a fee to the publisher) is a feature of their products, rather than a legal loophole to be overcome.

BookFinder.com -- helping ensure that good books "can be passed on to others" since 1997.

Posted by Anirvan

Publishers question used books

"Online Battle of Low-Cost Books", an article in yesterday's New York Times, covers the publishing industry's case against used books.

Publishing industry insiders and Authors Guild spokespeople do their best to paint the used book industry as unethical:

"Used books are to consumer books as Napster was to the music industry," she said. "The question becomes, 'How does the book industry address its used-book problem?' There aren't any easy answers, especially as no one is breaking any laws here."

For better or for worse, the right of first sale (the American legal principle that allows the owner of an object to resell it to others) is an enshrined part of the way America (and the rest of the world) works.

Your contractor can't stop you from reselling your home. Ford can't stop you from reselling your car. Apple can't stop you from reselling your computer. And the Authors Guild can't stop you from reselling your books.

Comparing used books to illegal Napster downloads and suggesting that the used book industry is operating based on some legal loophole seems to be part of the larger assault on basic consumer rights that the copyright industries (e.g. movies, music) have been engaging in for the past decade or so.

Posted by Anirvan

Email privacy post-Councilman

The Electronic Frontier Foundation points to three articles about the state of email privacy after the US v. Councilman decision, in which it was ruled that wretapping law didn't apply to Interloc's scanning its customers' email.

(Previous posts about the case: 1, 2)

Posted by Anirvan

Copyright clarity?

Is that old book still under copyright? Finding out has always been difficult, but it's a bit easier when you know the convoluted and ever-changing rules about the public domain.

Peter Hirtle of the Cornell Copyright Information Center has put together a detailed chart describing Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States. It's a small step toward clarity around the status of aging copyrighted works.

(via ResearchBuzz)

[Now Reading: 1968: Marching in the Streets by Tariq Ali and Susan Watkins]

Posted by Anirvan

Interloc case coverage

The Interloc case has garnered widespread attention in the media.

For example, you can read coverage from the New York Times, Associated Press, Wired News, and Politech.

The overall gist: it's a poor ruling, but it may not be the death knell of online privacy.

[Now Reading: Bad Boy Brawly Brown by Walter Mosley]

Posted by Anirvan