Alibris launches UK site
Alibris has retrieved its lost domain name, and relaunched their British site, Alibris.co.uk.
According to the press release:
“Alibris customers around the world can now purchase books with their local currency. Alibris accepts the British pound sterling, the euro, and eleven other currencies. Alibris has also reduced prices for U.K. and European shoppers by thirty to fifty percent. Alibris U.K. offers fast, direct shipping on orders destined for British or European addresses. With this direct-shipping upgrade, parcel delivery times have been cut in half.”
An Americana Exchange article describes the pricing model on the new site:
“Currently, UK and European sellers ship their orders to Alibris’ warehouse in Sparks, Nevada. While a reasonable enough procedure for American orders, it is monumentally inefficient for a UK dealer selling to a customer down the street. The British customer must not only wait for the book to make it back and forth across the Atlantic and most of the American continent, but pay for all of that unnecessary shipping…So how do you resolve this? Step one, obviously, is to allow British and European sellers to ship directly to customers in their own market. Now a book shipped from a London seller to a London buyer two miles away need travel only two miles, instead of over 10,000…On the new Alibris UK, shipping charges to England/Europe will be lower, to America higher (a reversal of regular Alibris), the assumption being the seller is located in Europe. The upcharge will be added to American sellers’ prices, to take into account their extra cost of shipping to Europe. This will not increase the cost of American sellers’ books to European customers, the upcharge being balanced by a reduction in the listed shipping charges to European destinations.”