Chapter 168 Progress . . . One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

I catalogued three books today. That sounds like very few, but I only had a couple of free hours today. And one of the items I catalogued was a set of 54 postcards depicting scenes from The Divine Comedy, so that one took a while. I consider it progress.

For those of you tired of reading about the trials of writing a print catalogue: in other book news, Chrislands, the company who designed and host my website, was recently bought by ABE. Though several booksellers have voiced valid apprehension over this transaction, ABE’s purchase of Chrislands is not necessarily a bad thing, and one of the first things the founders of Chrislands did was to reassure its booksellers that those of us with Chrislands websites would get added benefits because of the new ABE ownership.

Today was the announcement of the first of those “benefits” brought about by the new ownership. For a monthly fee plus a commission, Chrislands website owners can allow their books to be searched on Bookfinder. Bookfinder is also owned by ABE. It’s an aggregate search site, meaning you can type in title or author of a book you seek and Bookfinder will list sites where that book is selling and for how much. I don’t currently list my books on ABE for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into in this post, but I think Bookfinder offers a good service.

It’s the right of a business to charge a fee for its services, but I don’t necessarily see its ability to do so as a “benefit” to me, since I set up my own website in order to try to minimize selling through sites that charge commissions on sales, and sometimes even on shipping fees. However, paying internet fees is sometimes warranted. It’s the price of doing business, much as rent is if you own a brick and mortar shop.

So. Progress. If I opt in to the Bookfinder listings, new benefit — exposure to a wider market. New fees. More sales? Perhaps. Not necessarily. Many people are using Google Shopping to search for books and a few more use ViaLibri to search specifically for antiquarian books, the type of books I sell. Bookfinder provides a good and viable service, but does not necessarily own the market on searching the internet for books listed for sale. I’ll need to think about whether it’s going to be cost-effective for me to opt in to their search service.

What will all these changes mean? I don’t know. If you’re going to sell books on the internet, you had better be able to adapt to change or you won’t last long. However, I am convinced I haven’t completely understood the internet business model. I have more to learn. I think part of the lesson is selling in several diverse venues simultaneously, such as a website, book fairs, and print catalogues. You should even open a brick and mortar shop, if finances allow. (They don’t in my case.)

I also think that there are parts of the internet booksellers under-utilize; specifically, blogs, podcasts and YouTube. I think that the younger generation, the so-called future of book collecting, spends more time on sites like these than they do on ABE, Bookfinder, or Chrislands websites. Figuring out how to use these free venues to generate word-of-mouth and sales is the challenge. I will continue to think about how best to meet this challenge as my business progresses.

If you’re interested in delving into this topic further, you can read my previous post about ABE’s purchase of Chrislands here.

See you in the stacks!