While catching up with booksellers’ opinions on Abebooks policies (e.g. Jest, Colonel Colonel), I ran across Abebooks.de’s “Buchexperten-Netzwerk” (book expert network). It turns out that Abebooks’ German operation has been building up a network of bookstore partners, offering walk-in customers free appraisals and the chance to order Abebooks titles without having Internet access (i.e. taking the e- out of e-commerce).
A good number of North American click-and-mortar bookstores did the same thing, back before Internet/ecommerce access was common. This reminds me a bit of the new wave of eBay stores, except that you have the online marketplace actively promoting the offline sellers. Is this interesting? Does anyone familiar with the German-speaking book market have any predictions about how effective this might be?
[Now Reading: Cosmos Latinos: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Latin America and Spain edited by Andrea L. Bell and Yolanda Molina-Gaviln]
Posted by Anirvan
