[Andrew Langer, Andrew Langer, Bookseller (Editor)]: Bookjackers are a part of the world of Internet selling for booksellers. These are sellers that work with data describing books and not with the books themselves. They use databases with basic information about books and use automated pricing to offer copies at the top and sometimes also at the bottom of the market. When an order is received by one, they place an order with a seller offering an actual copy of the title.

This topic is in large part derived from a conversation held on the IOBA Discuss list between June 5 and June 8, 2020 and is solely for use of IOBA members. IOBA members are expected generally to offer refunds to customers where requested. Bookjackers generally are abusing both their customers who are charged more than market forces dictate and the sellers that actually offer the product. The complete conversation can be found in the Discuss archives under the topic “ethical question”.

[Peter Dast, Bookworks (PD)]: Accidentally accepted an ABE purchase from a bookjacker. As I suspected, the book is not what the ultimate buyer wanted. As they have selected ‘book not wanted’, I could, by ABE’s rules, decline the return. As an IOBA member, though, I feel I should exhibit a higher moral character and allow it. Thoughts?

[Jim Stachow, RareNonFiction (JS)]: Should IOBA have a specific (sub-rosa?) policy to handle situations like this? I favour a policy of allowing IOBA members to refuse such bookjacker return requests.

[Chris Volk, Bookfever.com (CV)]: I wouldn’t consider this an ethical question. It is the responsibility of bookjacker to accept the return and refund the buyer (and keep the book themselves to resell it later.

[Kathlyn H. Stewart, Gargoyle Books (KS)]: I have long wondered about these buyers & who exactly they are. Could y’all explain who “bookjackers” are & how they operate?

[Wesley Marquand, RugBooks (WM)]: Zubal said it best: https://www.zubalbooks.com/article-bookjacking.jsp 

[Editor]: Zubal Books is a large Internet seller, but not a member of IOBA. This detailed article explains what bookjackers are, and also provides an extensive list naming names of some of these sellers.

Zubal also wrote a follow-on article with additional details that includes a number of specific examples. https://www.zubalbooks.com/article-bookjacking-part2.jsp 

[Stephen Clauser, Arroyo Seco Books (SC)]: Aside from defining the term, where do these people list that they can buy from us at retail to a client they’ve presumably sold to over the internet? I’ll have to admit that once in exasperation I raised US shipping for a $30 book to $75 or so and explained it as a “reseller processing fee”. They refused the extra charge of course.

[KS]: Thanks so much! very helpful!!!! So how do you stop from selling TO them, or being the legitimate dealer whose listing they “jack”?

[WM]: My unsubstantiated theory is that they list our books where we don’t.

Stealing descriptions and images is annoying but ultimately my books get to people who want them and if someone makes a buck doing it I can’t blame them. I’m a middleman too. I think attitudes on this issue are highly dependent on your inventory as well. None of my customers care about edition. The vast majority of my books have only seen a single edition. I don’t think I’ve ever had a single bookjacker return but I’ll take returns for any reason.

[CV]: These data uploading parasites (as I prefer to call them) are primarily selling on Amazon, but they are also selling on Abebooks, Biblio and Alibris –

Unfortunately, if they order a book from you on amazon, it is virtually impossible to tell – the only clue might be a different name as buyer than the ship to address (but most of those are totally legit). In fact, one way to partially protect yourself from them is to list on Amazon – they seem to order more on Abebooks.

I don’t think we have gotten any orders from these parasites on Biblio – but we have on Abebooks – and the key is the email address –

among those used (but they can change) are

abe@marketplacebuyers – Cloudbuying1@cbbulkpg.com and similar –

I’m sure others can come up with more questionable email addresses –

it is easy to accidentally accept such an order. I don’t routinely look at the email address before pulling the book, etc. if you accept one, be prepared for a deluge. If you use the tactic of asking for a lot of extra shipping, then after doing that a couple of times, they will go away for a while – or at least that has been our experience – but they will be back!

To address “why” people buy from them, even though there might be cheaper copies out there. Maybe the seller with the real copy said “previous owner’s name on front endpaper” and a customer says well, I don’t want a copy with someone else’s name in it, so I will order this one described as “very good” with no details – and then they get your copy after all!

for example, we listed an exlib copy of a very collectible and kind of uncommon title in worn condition at a low price. I think we got 4 bookjacker orders for that on different sites. I am quite sure that NONE of the bookjacker’s listings said “worn exlib” I was almost ready to just take if offline altogether when it sold to a real buyer..

There is also a tendency to think that if a copy is priced higher, that should mean it is a better copy.

Remember, even frequent online buyers – even those who consider themselves relatively knowledgeable about buying on line – including some of our customers whom I have been trying to educate for years – might know these sellers exist, but they have absolutely no grasp of how pervasive these sellers are. A book which is genuinely uncommon with 2 or 3 real copies might have 10 fakes listed on Abebooks (I don’t even try and count them on Amazon).

I remember buying an uncommon local history (from a real bookseller) – and after he removed his copy from online, all of the other listings on ViaLibri disappeared within hours, because there was no longer a “real” copy listed (and hasn’t been for years now) –

One thing to remember is that not all sellers dislike these orders.

There are many who take the attitude “I got my price so who cares what he sells it for” – and these sellers also create what I see as a false equivalency: We ALL buy books from other sellers and increase the price – the difference is that we BUY the books first, take the risk, spend our money, catalogue them and store them based on the fact that we felt the other seller had underpriced it. These data uploaders take no risk, do not spend a dime until they have an order – AND their entire business is built on the lie that they pretend to have the books in stock.

[Editor]: Bookjackers maintain a list of cooperative sellers as well as books.

ViaLibri.net offers the best way to get a sense of the market at present. It is possible to see all copies of a title, including those from the bookjackers as well as those offering actual copies. Consider using a loose search. Try to find only a few, perhaps only three words that fully describe the book – one from the author, another from the title and one more from the publisher, and search using Keywords when searching. This offers the widest view of the complete market for a given title with a real picture of the scarcity of the words written within, and it also shows vividly the activities of the bookjackers.

[CV]: Bookjackers do NOT steal descriptions and images – in fact, they don’t have any descriptions – they just use the basic product info (title, author, publisher) and a grade (often multiple grades – the same seller will often list a title 2 to 4 times – as new and as used-like new; used-very good, and used-good) and maybe they will include some boilerplate that might warn about wear or missing cds or whatever or just offer fast shipping.

[Heidi Congalton, Between the Covers (HC]: When they order from us via Abebooks we ask for about $100 extra shipping, waiting until the last day possible. They will reject it, and we can reject the order. When they order from us via Amazon we also wait until the last day possible then reject the order taking the “hit”.

You can’t always identify them, but if you ask here (on the Discuss list) you’ll get some clues. Over the years we have built a running list of names we know we won’t sell to. One thing that helps is searching the email address in your database (please, tell me you all have a database by now) and seeing what other addresses they’ve had you ship to.

We usually catch them, but sometimes they’ve ordered twice before we caught on.

[PD]: The refund request is through the original Abebooks order, so it’s the ‘jacker” – GlassFrogBooks, in this case, using their abe@marketplacebuyers email – just got ANOTHER order from them, using their actual phone number, which I googled. I’ll decline the request, explaining that I won’t be held responsible for them misrepresenting MY books.

I find these orders to be handy in identifying which books I should get onto Amazon, since I no longer upload all listings there.

[CV]: As a sign of how pervasive these sellers are, I was looking at Abebooks search results for a relatively recent book – 1997 – and saw 7 results, 6 from bookjackers

On Abebooks, in this search anyhow, one of the bookjackers – ergode – had both the lowest and highest prices at 14 and 64 –

When I checked on viaLibri, lots of copies show up, even though I have blocked though most of the jackers – on eBay and elsewhere – but on some of the amazon international sites, prices are up over $1K

Their overwhelming presence makes it inevitable that they will sell “some” books

[Editor]: ViaLibri offers hints on the use of their search by a link at the bottom of the page as Search Help. There are many useful tips there.

With an account it is possible to save a set of permanent exclusions. If you include the name of a bookjacker as an exclusion of Keywords then they will be excluded from the results. I do not prefer to do this as I want to see the true state of the market even though I must ignore certain listings when setting prices.

[William Chrisant, Old Florida Book Shop (WC)]: I’ve been listening to this debate on & off over the years but have never understood what the fuss was all about. If someone puts a book up and a high-jacker buys it haven’t they (the listing bookseller) made a sale at their asking price? Why is everyone saying it’s overpriced when price is defined by willing buyer-willing seller? Shouldn’t they be saying it was possibly poorly researched & so underpriced by the initial lister who’s now complaining about the profit someone (or something) else is now making?

[Doug Nelson, Nelson Rare Books (DN)]: The issue here it is a bit different though – the bookjackers are trying to return the book – not because the actual bookseller described it wrong, but rather because the bookjacker’s algorithm described it wrong. If the return is accepted then there is no sale. The actual bookseller had to pack and ship the book, process the return, etc., while the bookjacker did nothing but operate a faulty algorithm.

So the ultimate question here is who should bear the burden of the bookjacker’s faulty algorithm, the actual bookseller or the bookjacker? I would argue it should be the bookjacker.

[Nialle Sylvan, The Haunted Bookshop (NS)]: I’m happy to sell any of my inventory direct to the “end user” in all reasonable circumstances. In cases where I have no personal investment – particular love for the book and archival value are as important to me as high dollar value – so — in cases where I’m just making my living, I don’t mind selling through bookjackers, though I use my discretion based on positive or negative experiences per buyer (Glass Frog can eat dust; too many bad experiences with dubious nondelivery claims).

That said, I sell a lot of university press in VG or better condition and tend not to list books with user marks, so since my stuff is almost always what the market wants, I incur little risk. Where I have problems with bookjackers is where they get the profit and I get the liability.

It’s my place to vet my buyers. If I don’t have contact with the buyers, I can decide that the buyer has not been vetted adequately. I also reserve the right to request more secure delivery methods for books with more cultural value, and if bookjackers can’t accept that, welp, their loss.

It’s my place to protect my buyers, so if I believe they’ve overpaid for a book (because I know that seller marks up without regard to the actual value of the book, e.g., those indiscriminate Monsoon users), I won’t ship. Maintaining the market is part of my job, too. I usually won’t fight over ten bucks, but I absolutely will refuse when a naive customer pays double the reasonable price.

I’m not whining about other people making a profit where it’s legal for them to do so, but I absolutely am protecting my books, name, and clients when I choose not to ship because I don’t want the books, my reputation, or the end-user to get dinged. If that means I turn down getting the price I asked, well, it’s fair of me to ask more when there’s higher liability. For potentially broad definitions of liability.

That said… loving the discussion here. Even when I disagree, the level of the discussion makes me even more glad I joined.

[Editor]: It can be helpful to request a signature on delivery and not just delivery confirmation. This is important as the cost rises, but it nearly eliminates the risk of claims for non-delivery where concerned.

[CV]: The question which started this off related to a return. in other words, a lot of work is being done because of the bookjacker’s “let’s fill this at the cheapest price we can find” attitude. The more significant issue, in my opinion is the negative effect these sellers have on the marketplace. A marketplace we all participate in, and try to make a living in.

The reality is that these bookjackers are listing, in enormous numbers – in the millions each for most of them – on precisely the sites which we count on to sell our own books.

The only major marketplace which has succeeded in keeping them off is eBay.

Do you think that it is an “honest” marketplace when a search on Abebooks brings up 7 copies, only one of which is being offered by a bookseller who actually has a copy?

Don’t you see that as damaging to actual book-owning sellers?

It is not a question of getting what I want for the book, it is – for me – a question of doing my tiny bit in not enabling these data uploaders to succeed and prosper.

To me the willing buyer/willing seller idea falls down when the buyer is unaware of the truth of the situation – that is, that the seller does not actually have the book. In other words, the buyer has been duped.

Obviously, others might make a different decision – and have good reasons for doing so.

But seriously, far from complaining about the profit that another seller might make from reselling one of our books, we offer a 20% discount to help make sure that they WILL make a profit – and if I underprice a book and another seller realizes that, that is fine too.

[Amy Ione, Diatrope Books (AI)]: To add my two cents, I would probably tell them to return the book to me with a notation that I will issue a refund if the book didn’t match my description. Given that the bookjacker probably doesn’t have the book to return, no refund would be necessary because nothing would come back. If they sent a different book, I would refuse the refund given that they didn’t return the book I mailed.

Also, while not a return problem, I’m wondering if people completely ignore the bookjackers business model when they price their books.

I frequently find when I’m listing an item that all (or most) of the listed copies on Amazon are bookjacker copies, and yet there are lower priced copies of the title available on ABE.

Indeed, one of the reasons I continue to list on Amazon is so that a customer can buy the book from me, rather than buying an overpriced bookjacker copy on Amazon from a seller who will buy the copy elsewhere to fulfill his or her Amazon order.

The upshot of this is that when assigning a price to my item the radical differences between sites always gives me pause. What irks me as much as the ghost copies is that there may be one legitimate listing on Amazon that has the high price because that vendor is using a re-pricing tool. Better World Books often falls into this category, although not really a good example given their business model. In any case, once I list my item for what I consider a fair price, the re-pricer driven items will re-price their book to something below mine. It is like a game. If I then raise my price they raise theirs too. It can go on and on indefinitely, although I don’t play the game.

I guess there isn’t much that can be done about the price variations but I must admit that I find them offensive as both a buyer and a seller.

[Editor]: I consider the quantity of books on offer but generally ignore bookjacker prices. I also sometimes ignore the one lowest price when it seems out of line and assume mine will be the second copy sold.

Data-driven repricing algorithms and the Better World Book model, where libraries “contribute” books in exchange for a percentage of the sales price are another issue equally worthy of discussion.

[Ken Amos, Nightshade Booksellers (KA)]: I realized when I bought a book from Irish Booksellers that you might not get a book at all— just a continuing series of excuses: “it’s in another warehouse”, “it was misplaced but we are looking for it” etc… I did get a refund since I bought it from ABE but I could easily see how they could string out a buyer for weeks and months until the buyer lost track and they kept the money.

I asked ABE one time if they had a recommendation on dealing with bookjackers and they suggested what others on this thread have mentioned— add additional shipping charges to the order.

To answer whether I price according the the Bookjackers — I do not. I am concerned when I price a book that I do not undercut legitimate dealers but I can’t worry about the weird pricing of Ergode books or Glass Frog.

And to respond to the question about why we should worry about these jackers at all since they are paying full retail; to me it goes to the issue of books as unique objects, not commodities. People buy based on intangible issues— including paying more for the same book than they need to. There is a reason many restaurateurs make the 2nd or 3rd cheapest wine on their menus the most overpriced based on value— customers don’t trust the cheapest wine on the list- even though cheap might be the best book! I hate it that real dealers lose a sale to these people who have no books on hand and would not be able to advise clients or even answer questions directly. It demeans the art of bookselling, which at the risk of sounding corny, has a long a distinguished history that I am proud to be a part of.

[Editor]: When the true seller of a book strings the bookjacker along, they must do the same thing to the buyer. This creates a ripple effect and a decline in service which we all strive to offer. Additionally, if they cannot locate a copy of a book under acceptable terms, they might be offering the excuse of lost in transit rather than admitting the title is not available. This excuse does not get a mark placed against them by Abebooks, Biblio, etc.

[John Howell, John Howell for Books (JH)]: The majority of my ABE buyers are anonymous to me. I would guess 90% of the customers who buy from me on ABE and Biblio.com are end users who got what they hoped to get when they placed an order for one of my books. I base this opinion on the number of return requests I get through these venues, which are negligible.

However, I often get requests to provide images in advance of a purchase, or other questions that absorb a lot of my time to provide. Sometimes I give the requester some push back on fulfilling their request, and a goodly number of those who reply sound like to me legitimate buyers who have been burned in the past, and do not trust the online market places, and the sellers they meet on these venues.

So, I don’t know how to “protect” a buyer, who may be one of these operations that list copies of the same book I have at (what seems to me) a ludicrously high price. If an end user selects the higher priced book and places an order, and the “book jacker” who listed the item at that high price buys my copy to be shipped to the end user…. It would seem to me by this logic, I would be obligated to the lister at the high price to protect their interests. That seems kinda awkward to me.

What would be ideal would be that the lister at the exorbitant price were not polluting the marketplaces that IOBA members play in. But we do not own those market places, and many of our email threads on IOBA Discuss document the degree to which those who provide these marketplaces could care a whit about the interests of IOBA members.

I don’t know where any of this leaves us, other than an acknowledgement that we operate in corrupt marketplaces and there is not much we can do about it.

[CV]: Are we accomplices or are we battling against the corruption by listing on these sites?

I know a few sellers – and probably more every month – have opted to leave Abe and Amazon for various reasons. But are we all to fold up our tents and leave the dishonest sellers as victors?

There are almost 12,000 sellers on AbeBooks – and I am sure that there are fewer than 50 bookjackers there. But this relatively small number of listers account for a huge number of books – especially if the book is a relatively uncommon ISBN title – After all, it is a lot easier to upload a list of 2 million books than it is to actually store and catalogue them!

There are a lot more bookjackers on Amazon, but there are also far more legitimate sellers there.

If legitimate sellers flee some of the most searched internet sites aren’t we leaving buyers with fewer options than if we stick around?

Another example from the books I am listing today – the 1995 hardcover edition of “The Memphis Diary of Ida B. Wells” – On Abe, there are only 3 hardcovers, from $49 to 64, all listed by bookjackers. Moving over to amazon, there are 2 hc copies being offered by Goodwill at $32 so we can have a pretty good idea of what the bookjackers are pricing off of – and there are 2 jackers’ copies there (different seller names) at $84 and $88

So should I not list our fine/fine first edition on Abe or Amazon just because these sites allow dishonest sellers to abuse the platform? Even biblio.com has some bookjackers on the site –

Relatively few bookjackers are “pure” relisters of out-of-print books. Some also list remainders very cheaply (legit, since they can order these from remainder houses which offer single book shipping) and new in print books (also legit for the same reason). This makes it more difficult for the sites to crack down on them (assuming they even want to) and it assures that they do have some “satisfied” customers.

[CV]: Our experience on AbeBooks when it comes to buyers is far different than you (JH) describe. It was several years ago, that I realized that we were getting enough “repeat customers” on Abebooks that I would want to track them. My tracking isn’t perfect, but of the orders placed on AbeBooks over the past 3 years, more than 15% were from repeat customers.

Probably 20% or more of those designated as “repeat customers” who buy directly from us, first bought from us on Abebooks. Some go back and forth between Abebooks, Biblio, our website, etc.

A sort of long distance friendship has even sprung up with some buyers.

While that still leaves the majority of our sales as “one-offs” I don’t consider the Internet “anonymous” – which is probably partly why I feel so strongly about bookjackers.

The fact that we get a lot of repeat customers is mostly due to the nature of our inventory – and the fact that we have a lot of books listed – so a customer who collects modern firsts, or mysteries, or science fiction or poetry, or even just a specific author, will be able to find more books in our inventory pretty easily.

Ironically, as our sales have increased in the last couple of months, the percentage of repeat customers on abe has decreased – I attribute this to more people beginning to buy more books online.

[Steven Temple, Steven Temple Books (ST)]: Bravo! So seldom said – an actual knowledgeable professional bookseller doesn’t just sell books, he sells his judgement. he must sometimes protect people from themselves, not to mention from people who think anything goes, since they don’t have any reputation to protect.

[Jeremy Moberg-Sarver, 86 Books (JMS)]: Someone on this discussion asked essentially ‘What’s the problem with bookjackers? If you are getting the price you are asking for then there’s no real issue with the bottom line?’. I get the sentiment, in theory, but there are reasons that their practices are becoming more insidious.

Here are two examples that are directly affecting the bottom line for my store:

1) Just yesterday, I received an Amazon A-to-Z Claim. I’m not sure that I had ever had that type of claim against my store, as I am always able to work out a refund or understanding with my customers without ‘escalating’ the situation to a claim. The ‘customer’ had not contacted me, but here was the Amazon claim, already decided in favor of the ‘customer’.

After looking a little closer, it was, in fact, the infamous “ergodebooks”, which I had not noted when I had made the sale, Their message to Amazon was “I havent (sic) received my item yet. I want my refund.” And take my money, they did. And, of course, I cannot contact the actual recipient of the package to see if this was true, because all I have is their mailing address. I am considering writing a letter to the end-customer to see if the package was actually delivered.

2) The other problem is also Amazon-specific. In addition to books, I sell a lot of rare Audio CD’s to collectors. In both the Books & CD’s categories at Amazon, bookjackers have been creating numerous (millions of) “Duplicate Pages” for existing Amazon Detail Pages. Over time, Amazon’s search algorithm has been picking up these Duplicate Pages with increasing frequency and it has been absolutely devastating the CD category. While Duplicate Pages are also there for books, they don’t seem yet to be completely taking over in the way that they are for CD’s, but I am going to provide a couple of examples so that people recognize what is happening when this starts affecting the Books category more often, which I have no doubt it will start doing soon. Be aware!

Here is how it works:

Example 1:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Michael+Chapman+%2F+Dreaming+Outloud&i=popular&ref=nb_sb_noss

This OOP Michael Chapman CD is being sold by my store for $19.98. It’s in the 2nd listing, which is the “official” Amazon-created page for the CD. It appears to be out of stock because of another change that Amazon recently made where they suppress prices for listings where there is not a ‘new’ Buy Box winner. But the bookjacker (CDjacker in this instance) is sure visible for the listing with a Buy Box win at a whopping $898.87! If I were an Amazon customer looking for this CD, I would probably it is only available for nearly $900 and not make a purchase.

Example 2:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Symbiosis+Mad+Frog&i=popular&ref=nb_sb_noss

Here you ONLY see two bookjacker pages with prices between $900-$1000. These are Seller-created Duplicate Pages. The only way to find the ‘real’ page is to click the link for the 1st Duplicate Page (the one with a 5-star review), then click on ‘See all 3 formats and editions’, then click on the ‘carrot’ to the left of the listing, ignore the third Duplicate page and then finally see that you can purchase this CD for only $9.04. I doubt many customers make it through all of these steps.

I am sure if you had made it this far, you are possibly thinking two things:” I sell books, not CD’s” and “this further proves that the Amazon catalog is a mess”. Yes, these examples are for CD’s, which most of you probably do not sell, but the issue has been slowly creeping up and taking over the CD category over the past year and will be coming for books soon!

And, yes, many of you do not even sell on Amazon for reasons like these and others. But there are many of us who do sell on Amazon. It is a powerful, well-known platform and accounts for over half of my revenue and presumably for others, as well.

I have known about bookjackers for many years, but I wouldn’t even have considered either of these scenarios (A-to-Z Claims & Duplicate Pages) over a year ago. What will they be up to next? This is why we need to do everything we can to pressure whatever sites we sell at to get rid of them, IMHO.

[DN]: Can you fight back against the A-to-Z claim? If not, I’d contact your state AG’s office.

If the language from ergodebooks was “I havent (sic) received my item yet. I want my refund” that is necessarily a fraudulent statement as they are a drop shipper and will not ever receive the product.

[Sylvia Petras, Leaf and Stone Books (SP)]: I doubt that your package didn’t arrive. Some of the bookjackers check regularly to see if there’s tracking and if there isn’t, they file a claim. Had that happen to me once on Abebooks — but I actually had the tracking, just had forgotten to upload. Abe refused the refund request and said they would “look into” the fraudulent claim. Don’t know whether they did or not.

[Editor]: Tracking of deliveries can be monitored by software, and claims can be submitted automatically. These are volume businesses and algorithms need not consider the truth about a delivery, only what the data shows.

[CV]: Zubal discusses this phenomenon with books in his part 2 on bookjackers (linked above) – they were apparently listing “in print” and still available university press editions at really high prices and by using a false date, a new listing was created – which appeared in searches above the legitimate listing –

However, it appears that amazon shut these sellers down.

Someone who deals more with university press books might know if this is still a problem.

that said, there are definitely times when all that shows up are a few fake listings. I have noticed this occasionally when we have sold books on Amazon for a reasonable price (under $30) and I click thru to the product – and the only copies still listed under that product id are some extremely high $300+ copies by fake selllers.

if I do a general title search on Amazon other listings come up with lots of reasonably priced copies

[JMS]: I assume that the problem persists with the University Press Editions. Once the sellers are kicked off, they just create new accounts and continue listing on the same pages. And as much as I have insisted, Amazon has yet to figure out a way (or had the motivation) to find the seller or sellers that created all of these pages and delete the sellers & pages in bulk. This would be a lot easier than the current method I use of calling Seller Support and asking them to merge duplicate pages one by one. There are literally millions of these duplicate pages throughout the BMVD categories and they all have them same slightly-off formatting, which says to me that they were created by a very limited number of sellers.

[AI]: Part of the bookjacker model is to not ship anything and hope you don’t notice. Seems they are playing it from both angles since when they don’t ship they pocket the money without a second thought.

I always thought this was the case because of the number of “lost” shipments that showed up over the years. A recent order confirmed this for me. I got an ABE wants email with an incredibly attractive price and bought the book. The “seller” confirmed the order and after a few weeks I asked if there was a tracking number, explaining that the package hadn’t arrived. They simply issued a refund and didn’t even reply.

A few days later their “book” came through my wants again with a price of about $259 rather than the earlier $12. I decided they realized it was underpriced and so they didn’t ship it and re-listed it instead. It was only later that I learned they are bookjackers. I think it was Summit Reade.

One problem with the not even bothering to round up a product to fulfill the order is that this kind of oversight happens all the time, and it is often just an oversight rather than outright fraud. I ordered a few books for myself from Johns Hopkins Press in late May. They sent a shipment confirmation and the USPS tracking number didn’t even show as a pre-ship as of late last week so I sent an inquiry. They responded today saying the package is on the way and is late. The tracking number now shows as pre-ship with a date of 6/6. Similarly, I had another order in May that never shipped until I inquired two weeks later. This wasn’t books, but the Dick Blick art store, which is a large chain.

JMS, as for the A-to-Z claim, boy is that the pits. I don’t read the Amazon forum much anymore. There used to be folks there who specialized in knowing how to deal with violations.

[SP]: I have to admit that I forget I’ve ordered books for myself all the time. If it’s for a customer, no, but if it’s for me… We actually had an ebay seller contact us last month and ask if we’d received a book that we had won on auction over a year ago. We realized we never had received it. He was cleaning up his files, found the sold item marked but had no record of shipping and couldn’t find the book, either. It was a $12 book so we suggested he just not worry about it since it was our fault that we hadn’t paid any attention, but he insisted on refunding and he did. Now that’s follow up! I doubt HE’s a bookjacker!

[AI]: Definitely not a book jacker!

[Editor]: An “ethical question” indeed!

*****

[Editor]: A follow-on was posted a bit later about correspondence with Biblio about a specific transaction.

[Amy Candiotti, Pistil Books Online (AC)]: I received an order today with the Biblio 15% dealer discount applied. The Biblio order email indicated, “Special note:<named> is a bookseller on Biblio.com (xxxxxx) and has been given a dealer discount on this order. ”</named>

A look at their books on Biblio shows 524,099 books, and when sorted by highest price, the top listing is for a book priced at $68,791.46 with no description other than it is an ex-library book. This “seller” has all the hallmarks of a scraper – no actual descriptions, ridiculous prices, and a large number of books.

I wrote Biblio customer support saying that I would not fill this order and asked what their policy was on scrapers getting the Biblio dealer discount. I’ll let you know what they say.

[AC]: (the next day) Biblio wrote back this morning. Message below. I replied to this message thanking them for their quick reply and cancelling the order, but also mentioned that there was one bookselling model she didn’t mention–the bookjacker and I sent her a link to Zubal Books’ explanation.

From Biblio:

Hello,

Thanks for your message. I’ve gone ahead and canceled the order with no impact on your fulfillment rate. We don’t have a way of preventing that seller from ordering your listings, but should they do so again you can drop us an email to cancel the order.

There are some booksellers listing on Biblio whose inventories are not housed locally, and some who have very large in-house inventories, but also make use of drop-shipping in order to keep their order fulfillment rates high. This means they order from other dealers for shipment directly to their customers. There are also some dealers who are wholesalers, or list at least some new books, and those often need to be ordered from publishers and/or drop-shipped.

There are over 6,000 dealers listing on Biblio, and they operate under different models and principles. Each bookseller manages and is responsible for their own inventory, including listing information and prices, shipping rates and delivery estimates. Our main focus is to ensure that the customers they serve are satisfied with their orders, that they arrive on time and as described. We do take customer feedback very seriously, and I have noted your feedback regarding this seller in that profile for further review.

Booksellers on Biblio with consistently low fulfillment, and/or consistently poor feedback and complaints from customers are suspended from listing on our website.

Please let us know if you have any other questions about our policies and we’ll be happy to help!

With Regards, Biblio Bookseller Support

[Editor]: The battle continues. Thanks Amy!