Summer 2002 (Vol. III, No. 2)

Table of Contents

• From the Editor

• PopShops offers Booksellers a New Deal

• Michael Tokman – Choosebooks (ZVAB)

• P. Scott Brown – ABookCoOp (dba Tomfolio.com)

• Richard Weatherford & Marty Manley – ALIBRIS

• Brent James – Advance Book Exchange (ABE)

• Bibliodirect Opening

• Leo Harrison – Biblion.com

• Announcements

• IOBA Visits the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

• Lee Miller, author of “Roanoke”

• American Indian Authors & Literature

• Keeping Track Of A Changing Marketplace

• The Interview: Andras Bereznay, Historical Cartographer Extraordinaire

• Lisa & Leon Martin – Global Book Mart

• Thoughts on a Friends Passing – Leonard W. Lanfranco

• Joyce Meskis of Tattered Cover Bookstore, Denver, CO

• Bob Fleck & Jelle Samshuijzen – ILAB/LILA

• Ephemeral Assays—Use Protection!

From the Editor

Before I get started telling you about what’s in this issue of The Standard, I’d like to recommend that you take a look at: http://www.compleatweb.com/bookinfo/ Eric Stephenson has put together an extremely helpful database of online venues for selling books, with links to information about listing fees, special fee offers, number of dealers, and number of books in their databases.

We will be working with Eric to try to get more complete information for his database and we’ll try to have updates of Eric’s database in each future issue of The Standard, and hope to add to the types of information supplied by each such selling venue.

Now, on to this issue of The Standard.

First, we have a Memorial Page (by Jim Hart) for Len Lanfranco, who died recently. Len was IOBA’s PR Committee Chair, and because Len was both an outstanding person and a very valuable member of IOBA, we want to honor his memory by telling you a bit about him.

We’ve continued the series of interviews with commercial online book databases, and have interviews in this issue with Biblion, ChooseBooks, ABookCoOp (TomFolio database), Global Book Mart (and congrats to Lisa and Leon for their comeback), and ILAB, and an announcement from BiblioDirect about their imminent official opening. We hope to have interviews in the summer issue with BookAvenue, TitlesDirect, ABAA, and ibooknet (the U.K. cooperative). If I’ve missed a commercial database, please let me know.

We also have interviews with Dick Weatherford and Martin Manley of Alibris, and with Brent James of ABE, about the recent changes at each organization.

There are articles/information from Kathy Lindeman about the upcoming Colorado Book Seminar and from David Gregor about his upcoming Book Seminar in Phoenix. Also a notice from Andy Gutterman about an upcoming revision to BookTrakker. And, finally, information from Sam Gottlieb about his upcoming Glendale, CA Book Fair.

We have an interview with Joyce Meskis, owner of The Tattered Cover Book Store(s) in Denver, CO—as I’m sure you all know, Joyce recently won her lawsuit on customer privacy issues (good on you, Joyce!).

There is another very interesting interview with Lee Miller, American Indian scholar and author of “Roanoke: Solving The Mysteries Of The Lost Colony” and, in the same vein, an extremely interesting article by Ken Lopez about Native American literature.

And, by accident by sending notice of the last issue of the newsletter to the Antiqbook mail list and through the serendipitous happening that he drew the maps for Lee Miller’s “Roanoke”, we have an in-depth interview with Andras Bereznay, cartographer extraordinaire (whose arm I had to twist to get details and stories–some very funny–of his amazing background).

Greg Williams, Maria Bustillos, Julie Fauble, and Mary Watanabe represented IOBA at the recent L.A. Times Festival of Books, and we have lots of information from Greg, Maria and Julie about the festival and the excellent publicity IOBA got there.

Susan Siegel at BookHunter Press (who puts out the printed and online book store guides) has written us a great article on the current trends she sees in the book business.

And, to finish up with newsletter contents, Maria Bustillos of Popula Auctions has written an article for us about the fantastic new fixed-price feature coming to Popula. Watch out, Amazon and eBay! :>)

Now, I want to add a personal note. I want to thank, most whole-heartedly, two women who have been of immense importance to me in being able to get a decent newsletter out to you.

Barbara Lightner has done a wonderful job—giving me ideas, always being there when needed, and she has done some really wonderful interviews, sometimes under very difficult circumstances. Deanna Ramsay is without peer, as far as I’m (and most people I know) concerned. She is a computer guru without equal, and just one of the smartest and best people I know. Both IOBA and I are lucky to have both of them on our side.

Enjoy the newsletter!

Shirley Bryant

PopShops offers Booksellers a New Deal

PopShops, the new fixed-price/shopfront offering from Popula Auctions, will deliver booksellers a new and different customer base in a new and different kind of venue, according to Maria Bustillos, the company’s CEO. The new site is scheduled to launch on May 15.

“Even the least tech-savvy Web user can create a PopShop in just a few minutes,” says Bustillos. “The cost is way less than setting up your own website: just $10 per month and 10% commissions on successful sales (you can also prepay a year’s fees, for just $100.) Because Popula encourages links to outside services and to your own websites elsewhere, PopShops is a great adjunct to any existing online strategy for the retail sale of used and rare goods. For someone with an existing database of books it’s especially easy, because the whole file can be uploaded and translated into the PopShops system with very little effort or time.”

PopShops offer dealers a permanent Web presence with its own URL and headers, a customizable template including four images, space for a logo and contact information, a Printing Press feature for sending out newsletters and sale announcements to new and existing customers, and other hot new features to be revealed in the final launch. A print and Web advertising campaign is already underway.

Popula’s original offering, an offbeat online auction, enjoys a high reputation among auction aficionados, who praise the site’s ease of use, its relaxed and fun atmosphere, and its friendly and responsive customer service. Publications as diverse as Fortune Magazine, Women’s Wear Daily, Long Island Newsday, and Courtney Love’s Hole website have all recommended Popula highly. Having weathered the Internet downturn successfully and maintained its eclectic atmosphere intact, the company has decided that the time is right for expansion.

“The Internet is still in its infancy,” continues Bustillos. “Those of us with the patience and foresight and flexibility to take advantage of new developments will be in an excellent position a few years from now. We’ve been planning for this stage for two years, and are very excited to be able to offer PopShops at last.”

Bustillos also observes that Popula’s following includes a broad cross-section of discerning younger customers who may not normally shop for rare and out-of-print books, but whose collectors’ addictions to vintage clothing, pop culture artifacts or vinyl LPS make them ideal candidates for bibliomania. Says Bustillos, “A lot of these kids have got the psychological profile for the dread book disease—they just need a small amount of information, a little nudge in the right direction … I know, I sound like a dope peddler! But booksellers who sell on Popula are likely to find buyers they won’t find on other sites.”

“Popula’s greatest strength is that we put our dealers first,” adds Oliver Corlett, co-founder and President of the company. “We feel that when customers come to buy from you at Popula, they’re yourcustomers, not Popula’s. We offer you the tools to serve them–but otherwise, we basically stay out of the way. It’s not in our interest to try to control our dealers’ transactions, payment systems or fulfillment options. We encourage you to use our system as a part of a whole sales strategy. We want our dealers to succeed, and we offer them the freedom to do things their own way.”

A few FAQs regarding PopShops:

How do booksellers upload their inventories to PopShop? In other words, can we upload whole inventories like we do to databases, and you guys convert the formats?

Yes. For now, we are converting files in-house from any of the usual suspects (ABE, HomeBase, BookMate, BookTrakker, Access, Excel, etc.) We’ll be adding conversion utilities so that merchants can upload straight from the site.

Or is it more like eBay, where either you list them on MisterLister or an independent software vendor’s program once and then have them for future use if they don’t sell?

Once your inventory is translated into the PopShops format, you can keep it all on Popula for as long as you subscribe, and re-use data as you need it.

Are you encouraging dealers to upload 1,000 or 3,000 or more books, or are you aiming for smaller amounts of wares in each shop? What if a bunch of dealers uploaded thousands of books each–are you equipped technically and server-wise to handle that type of load?

We’re aiming to grow a large database, and have built the system to accommodate and scale with that in mind. PopShops is a whole separate “wing” of our system and runs its own software.

Is the $10 regardless of how many items are in the shop?

For now, yes. It’s an introductory price, and I hope a lot of dealers will take advantage of it.

Also, can items other than books be put in PopShops? I sell some antique jewelry and glass, for instance. They’re not in any database, so is there a program where I could enter the specifics to put them in a PopShop?

Yes, PopShops is equipped to handle the same categories of merchandise as Popula Auctions. We have a separate Populator upload system for adding inventory.

I assume images can be attached to items in PopShops?

Yes. PopShops descriptions also accommodate HTML and offsite links, so that users can use their PopShops to do different kinds of cross-merchandising.