Amazon Ends Affiliate Program in California After Sales Tax Law (Jason Boog, Galley Cat 6-30-11). Amazon amends affiliate agreement to read: “if at any time following your enrollment in the Program you become a resident of California, Colorado, Illinois, North Carolina, Rhode Island, or Connecticut, you will become ineligible to participate in the Program.”

Australian Online Bookshop at http:/​/​www.bookworm.com.au/​

Bigwords (buy, rent, or sell textbooks--with focus on lowest price)

Bimbambim (Swapping, Not Shopping)

Bookburro.When looking at a page about a book, this Firefox and Flock browser add-on tells you which online resources, libraries and stores have the same book.

Book Collecting, more info on (RBMS, Rare Books and Manuscripts Section, Association of College and Research Libraries, ALA).

Book Crossing: In This Club, Books Free to a Good Roam (Christina Ianzito, Washington Post, 8-11-09), story about Bookcrossing.com, a catch-and-release program, "leaving a book in a public place to be picked up and read by others, who then do likewise."
From the Post story: "The best BookCrossing journey has to be that of a copy of Nick Hornby's 'High Fidelity,' placed by a Scottish BookCrosser on the summit of a 'wee bittie hill' in the highest village in Scotland six years ago. According to journal entries, it was picked up by someone with the name explorer-21, who wrote, 'hopefully I'll be able to help it on its journey, maybe onto a much bigger hill.' A week later explorer-21 reported having left it on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro in Tanzania. The book's last entry is from a German physician, who described receiving it as a gift from a patient while he was working at a Tanzanian hospital. ('Thanks for the book!' the doctor wrote. 'It looks a bit battered but still ok.").'

Book Depository.com and Book Depository UK. Prices differ, but both offer free shipping worldwide.

BookFinder's list of most-sought-after out-of-print books, 2011

BookFinder4U (you give it a title and it scans 130 stores and finds best price for that title; it also rates the stores)

BookMouch.com (exchange used books: earn points for giving a book away; redeem points to get books you want)
The Book of my Enemy Has Been Remaindered. Clive James' classic poem about about literary schadenfreude, as posted by Dwight Garner on the NY Times Paper Cuts blog about books.
BookFinder4U (you give it a title and it scans 130 stores and finds best price for that title; it also rates the stores)

Find-a-Book.com, a searchable database of antiquarian books, maps, prints and autographs offered by the world's leading booksellers, affiliates of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB). Website also lists international book fairs of interest to antiquarian book dealers.

Historian Orlando Figes agrees to pay damages for fake reviews on Amazon (Alexandra Topping, Guardian, 7-16-10). Historian to pay damages and costs to two rivals who launched a libel case after he posted reviews "praising his own work and rubbishing that of his rivals."

Indie Bound, a community of independent bookstores. Click here for information on how to link to the site, or be an affiliate (getting a fee for sales that come through your recommendation). Many websites link to Indie Bound as well as (or instead of) Amazon and Barnes & Noble, to give regular brick and mortar bookstores a chance to survive.

Librarians (we love you!). Dave Robicheaux's salute to librarians in Last Car for Elysian Fields by James Lee Burke

Paying More to Send U.S. Mail at U.P.S. Stores . Ray Rivera, NYTimes, 12-20-09, investigates wide-ranging markups on U.S. postal service rates at UPS stores. UPS stores charge whatever markup they like, and one Manhattan store suggested prices of $19.90 and $21 on an 8-pound package that cost $8.80 to ship at the post office across the street. Packages sent via UPS and the U.S. postal service both arrived in two days.

Where things are going in book publishing, part 1, Mike Shatzkin's important "What I would have done in London (part 1)" blog entry, a follow-up to his major Stay Ahead of The Shift blog essay. Starts with things "coming right up" and continues with the view of the next 20 to 25 years. Essential reading for booksellers and buyers.

Would you pay $27,500 for book proofs? Emma Mustich, Salon.com, on the high price of pre-publication copies of literary classics, from "1984" to "Harry Potter"

Your Old Books. The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries answers frequently asked questions about rare and older books and their value. (For example: What makes a book rare? What is the difference between a rare book and a secondhand book? What kinds of books are usually not rare? What is the difference between a first and limited edition? How can I ascertain a fair price? Who might accept my old books as a donation?) You can also download a compact PDF version of same FAQ answers.

[Back to Top]

---

Books about how to buy and sell books

If you purchase anything after connecting to Amazon through one of the following links, this site gets a small commission on the whole sale -- which helps support keeping the site going.

• Selling Used Books Online: The Complete Guide to Bookselling at Amazon's Marketplace and Other Online Sites by Stephen Windwalker. One reviewer suggests that it needs updating to include services such as Scoutpal, Sellerengine, Aman, Mail Extractor,etc., which allow online sellers to batch-edit large parts of their inventory
• Buying Books Online: Finding Bargains and Saving Money with Booksense Stores, Amazon Marketplace, and Other Online Sites by Steven Windwalker

• Among the Gently Mad: Strategies and Perspectives for the Book-Hunter in the 21st Century by Nicholas A. Basbanes
• ABC for Book Collectors by John Carter and Nicholas Barker
• Book Finds, 3rd Edition: How to Find, Buy, and Sell Used and Rare Books by Ian C. Ellis
• Collected Books: The Guide to Identification and Values (4th edition, 2011) by Allen and Patricia Ahearn, authors of Collected Books: The Guide to Values (2002)
• The Official Price Guide to Collecting Books by Marie Tedford
• Pocket Guide to the Identification of First Editions, compiled by Bill McBride
• Used and Rare: Travels in the Book World by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone

---

[Go Top]
Textbooks, new and used
• Bigwords (buy, rent, or sell textbooks--with focus on lowest price)
• DavesCampus.com (compare prices for new and used college, high school, and homeschool textbooks etc.)
• DirectTextbook (enter ISBN, title, author, or keywords and DT searches 200 online bookstores for cheapest used textbook)
• eCampus (buy and sell new and used books and textbooks)
• GetCheapBooks (cheap books and textbooks)
• Get Textbooks
• MyBookBuyer.com (sell used textbooks -- free shipping)
• Textbook Superstore (Half.com), an eBay company

---

[Go Top]
Great bookseller blogs
(hurrah for brick and mortar stores and the
booksellers that still hand sell books))
• Aaron's Books (Lancaster County, Lititz, PA)
• Barbara's Byline (Politics & Prose, DC)
• Bookdwarf
• Books that sell themselves • • (Boswell and Books)
• BookPeople's blog (Austin, TX)
• Boswell and Books (Milwaukee)
• The Boswellians (Milwaukee)
• Carla Comments Politics & Prose, Washington DC
• Greenlight Bookstore (Brooklyn)
• Inkwell Bookstore Fallmouth, Massa)
• Kash's Book Corner (Boulder Bookstore--check out recommended book lists along left side)
• McNally Jackson (Prince Street, NYC)
• Mr. Micawber Enters the Internets
• Off the Shelf Boulder Book Store
• The Regulator Bookstore (Durham, NC)
• RiverRun Bookstore (Portsmouth, NH)
• Sam Wellers (new, used, out of print)
• Scribbling in San Antonio
• Skylight (Los Feliz neighborhood, Los Angeles)
• The Strand
• There is no gap (Shaman Drum Bookshop in Ann Arbor--closing?)
• Vroman's Bookstore Blog

---

[Go Top]

The following material was migrated here from the soon-to-be-late website of the late, great Sarah Wernick, by permission of her husband, Willie Lockeretz.

Amazon.com: Making Changes in Listings and Deciphering the Rankings

If the Amazon.com listing for your book is incorrect; if the page omits features that might improve sales, such as sample content or laudatory reviews – or if a reader review is defamatory or obscene – authors or publishers can request changes. Here's information about updating your listing, as well as links to information about the Amazon sales rankings.

• Correcting mistakes
  
• Adding content
  
• Dealing with inappropriate reviews
  
• Deciphering Amazon's sales rankings
  

Updated January 1, 2007

Correcting Mistakes

What if Amazon has omitted the subtitle of your book or misspelled the name of your co-author? At the bottom of Amazon's page for each individual book is a Feedback box. One of the links is to "Update product information."

Click on the link. This takes you to the Catalog Update Form. You will be asked to log onto Amazon to verify your identity. Once you've done that, you'll be allowed to proceed to the update form, which already has the title of the book and the ISBN filled in. You can correct any of the following by checking the relevant box and following simple prompts:

• Title
  
• Author
  
• Binding
  
• Publication Date
  
• Publisher
  
• Number of Pages
  
• Edition
  
• Format
  
• Language
  

If you experience difficulties or delays (more than a week), send an email to book-typos@​amazon.com with the ISBN and title plus the correction. Indicate that you are the author.

If that doesn't work, try the telephone: 206-266-2992 or 206-266-2335.

go to top of page

Adding Content

If you want to add descriptive material to the page for your book, you will need to fill out the Books Content Form. Though the form is geared to publishers, authors may use it too. Have your ISBN and the new text ready ahead of time to simplify the procedure.

Here are the types of material you can add with the Book Content Update Form:

• Description
  
• Publisher's comments
  
• Author comments
  
• Author bio(s)
  
• Table of contents
  
• Inside-flap copy
  
• Fair-use citations from reviews (source plus up to 20 words per review)
  
• First chapter or other excerpt
  

After you enter the content, you'll be given the opportunity to edit it. Before you sumbit the material, use your browser's copy function to keep a record of the final version.

Once you've sent your additions, a page will come up saying that the additions should appear within five business days. If you experience difficulties send an email to book-typos@​amazon.com with the ISBN and title plus the additions. If that doesn't work, try calling Amazon: 206-266-2992 or 206-266-2335.

go to top of page

Dealing with Inappropriate Reviews

Amazon.com allows readers to post reviews – including negative reviews – of books. Most authors would not wish to censor legitimate reviews, even if we disagree with them. However, we do have the right to protect ourselves from reviews that violate Amazon's policy prohibiting content that is illegal, obscene, threatening, defamatory, invasive of privacy, infringing of intellectual property rights, or otherwise injurious or objectionable.

If an objectionable review appears on your page, you can ask to have it removed. For example, a reader posted a "review" of my coauthored book, Strong Women, Strong Bones, which is about osteoporosis, claiming - I assume as a joke - that it contained "wonderfully graphic photographs" showing a gaping hole burnt into the palate of my collaborator from "hooting" calcium. Needless to say, the book contains no such photographs. I drew the review to Amazon's attention and they deleted it.

To deal with an inappropriate review: Send an email to community-help@​amazon.com. Include the title and ISBN of the book, as well as the review to which you're objecting. Identify yourself as the author and explain your objection. You might find it helpful to read and refer to Amazon's "Conditions of Use," which lists forbidden review content.

go to top of page>

Deciphering Amazon's Sales Rankings

Amazon ranks all of the books in its inventory in order of their sales. These rankings provide useful information for authors, from the proposal stage, when the rankings pinpoint our competition, to the post-publication stage when they help us assess the effectiveness of publicity and predict the likely content of our next royalty statement.

For a detailed look at how sales ranks are determined and what they signify, see Surfing the Amazon - Decoding Sales Ranks, by Morris Rosenthal. If you haven't read the article recently, check it again: Rosenthal updates it from time to time. Also check out his blog, which discusses rating-related developments at Amazon and elsewhere.

If you become obsessed with the Amazon rankings of your books (or those of your competitors), you can subscribe to a service offered by Books & Writers, which provides email updates weekly, daily, or even hourly. The cost is $10 per year for a single book, $20 per year for two to ten books, and more for additional books. You can try the service free for a month.

go to top of page>
Updated January 1, 2007

---

[Go Top]

Amazonfail. Craig Seymour in his blogpost Is Amazon.com homophobic? Amazon.fail and you're done launched a spring 2009 controversy about which there has been MUCH Twittering. Amazon later explained to the press that its de-ranking of all gay and lesbian literature as "adult literature" was a "glitch," but it felt like censorship policy to most of the tweeters. Among tweets (under the hashtag #amazonfail, and apologies in advance: I don't know protocol on crediting these):
"Suggestion: make content filtering a selectable OPTION, much like Google does."
"Irony: a company named for a band of lesbian warriors considers lesbian content morally objectionable."
"Don't let Amazon decide which books you need to be 'protected' from."
"The revolution will be tweeted."
Seymour followed up on his initial post later with My AmazonFail Timeline.