BookWriter Professional: Flagship Software for Booksellers

BookWriter Professional is a new application created by Tom Sawyer, co-founder of Interloc and Alibris, serving as Chief Software Engineer from 1993-2001. His past creations include BookMaster, Record Manager, BookMate, Book Prices Realized, and the UIEE data exchange format. Last year, Tom produced the unique BookWriter Web composer, which effectively positions bookseller’s books in search engines. This exclusive IOBA article offers the first public disclosure of BookWriter Professional, the next step in the BookWriter series.

Tom, what’s the motivation behind BookWriter Professional?

I really enjoy producing software that’s actually useful, and I especially enjoy seeing booksellers make productive use of it. The last few years have offered a glimpse of what’s possible, but the technical learning curve is getting longer for many booksellers. Often, they spend more time pointing and clicking than actually doing book work. That’s a shame because computers are supposed to be tools, not an end unto themselves.

BwPro is a program I’ve been wanting to produce for a long time. I believe it takes the bookseller to the next level of productivity. It is a complete bookselling environment, and it manipulates data in ways that are currently very difficult to accomplish, particularly in a single program.

Is BwPro consistent with your previous software?

In some ways it is. It was a big surprise for me to learn how many booksellers are still using BookMaster and Record Manager. Apparently, I did something right. The old software still gets many jobs done satisfactorily, with minimal effort. But those programs are more than a decade old and they’re very much out of date.

I tried to code BwPro to carry the same philosophy forward into the Windows and Internet realms. A key design objective was to make BwPro so that a non-technical bookseller could do things with a minimum of trial-and-error. The result is that BwPro has a short learning curve. Most dealers who’ve tried it so far have jumped right in without having to read a manual. It’s as intuitive as I could make it.

Isn’t user-friendliness an objective in all software design?

Perhaps, but in my humble opinion it seldom actually happens. It seems like this should be an easy thing for a software designer to do, but it’s deceptively difficult. I think it’s similar to being a good writer — it’s easy to read and enjoy a finished product and fail to see the amount of work the author put into it. Few books can be enjoyed by young and old alike, be appreciated by both new and veteran readers, satisfy both the publishers and the readers, and yet stand up to the kind of intense scrutiny that accompanies a major work.

Good software is like that. It is REALLY hard to make a program universally workable while keeping complexity low and adaptability high. After nearly 20 years of doing this, I’m still learning and still don’t consider myself to be an expert. It takes a long time to do a good job. Every little thing requires constant back-and-forth testing and tweaking to make it right. One minor detail can take all day to resolve. That’s one reason it’s taken so long to finish.

What are the program’s basic features?

Like BookMaster and Record Manager, BwPro focuses on specific core aspects of bookselling. Inventory, Contacts, Wants, Uploading, Importing, Exporting, Composition, and Invoicing/Accounting are all core capabilities. The program also provides Internet-based features such as email, FTP, and the ability to look up specific books in Internet venues.

What features does BwPro provide and how are they presented?

To a great extent, the same factors that were important a decade ago are still important today: Easy, rapid and intuitive data entry is a big one, and BwPro provides a wealth of features to accomplish that. A good data entry system addresses both contemporary and antiquarian books, and I think BwPro does this well.

Booksellers also need to easily manage contacts and wants, upload records to multiple locations, import and export information quickly and easily, to professionally compose information in ways that will help sell books, and manage accounting information. BwPro addresses these things in a single package and tries to group their functionality logically, according to the real-world needs of the booksellers who make use of it. I’ve put things where I hope people will expect to find them, and provided capabilities that I hope will help booksellers become more productive.

Can you offer some examples of real-world needs BwPro addresses?

Sure. For instance, the Inventory Record dialogue provides the user with everything needed to quickly enter and edit records, but it also provides extensive image association controls. You can associate both on-line and off-line images, even combine them in a single record, and BwPro handles them seamlessly (see image). You can also see an instant preview of what a book record will look like when it is composed.

For those who do their book image scans in batches, BwPro will gather all images in a particular directory and automatically associate the images with records after the fact, based on the naming convention used. Anyone who’s ever done this manually knows what a huge timesaver this can be. BwPro can also perform the same operation on a database-wide level, for all records. A bookseller can sit down and scan images for 100 books, then go into BwPro and tell the program to associate all of the images with their corresponding records automatically, in one shot. It even retains the image sequencing specified according to the name suffix used (a, b, c, etc).

Another need is extracting ISBN codes from existing descriptions. Many booksellers have their ISBN data embedded in Comments or some other field. BwPro can scan database records, extract validated ISBN codes, and populate a dedicated ISBN field with the data. This in itself can save a bookseller hundreds of hours of hand-editing.

There are lots of little conveniences. For instance, you can get instant pricing data for any book. You can instantly look up any Zip Code, City or County, even display a map of it. You can load and save Hit Lists to create instant catalogs. There are lots of little goodies like this. Most of these features came about as a direct result of booksellers telling me: “Boy, it sure would be great if your program did such and such.” I’ve tried to accommodate these suggestions wherever possible.

What other problems does BwPro solve for booksellers?

Another big problem for many booksellers today is record format conversion. Frequently, they must convert UIEE to tab-delimited, or vice versa, or import data into a spreadsheet, or into an XML template, or export data in some way to meet the requirements of a particular web site or selling venue. More often than not, this results in data loss, or formatting problems, or incomplete records — the list of aggravations is long. It’s amazing how many hoops booksellers are forced to jump through to meet the requirements of different companies.

BwPro takes a much more down-to-earth approach to this, by providing many different ways to manipulate records. You can set up separate export templates for different sites, and even compose a set of different files and upload each one to a different location, in sequence.

There is also a group of stand-alone utilities that do things like convert a UIEE file into a tab-delimited file, read HomeBase database records, read ABE’s tagged data upload format, convert old BookMate PRV files into other formats, export to Excel .csv format, etc.

BookWriter Pro basically allows booksellers to do what they want with their data, instead of jumping through hoops or being restricted to what a company will allow — without having to be a technician or read an instruction manual to figure out how to do it.

Is BwPro compatible with existing BookMaster, Record Manager and BookMate databases?

Yes, existing records can be directly read and users can continue to use their old software if they so choose. But there are a lot of new fields and obviously the old software doesn’t know anything about these. Downward compatibility has its limits.

Walking the line between proprietary and generic design is a difficult balancing act. You have to provide a wide range of possibilities, but you have to do it within a recognizable framework. I think my predecessor applications were successful because they did this. I’ve tried hard to make BwPro do the same thing.

What other capabilities have you included?

Quite a few. There’s comprehensive global editing, price adjustment features, invoicing and purchase orders, and a lot of the favorite features of my predecessor software, such as Hit Lists, data entry menus, and an on-screen composer for producing catalogs, quotes, and similar documents. I’m still finalizing the complete feature set.

How does BookWriter Pro help booksellers sell more books?

Aside from serving as an excellent rapid data entry and sales management system, if I had to pick one thing it would be the program’s ability to perform rapid and complex manipulation and composition of book data. This serves both dependent sellers who upload records to listing services, and independent sellers who market their books directly to their own customers. Making data compatible with Internet-based requirements is a key design objective.

Do you feel today’s bookseller is faced with more obstacles than in the past?

I think there are more challenges and that few booksellers are well-equipped to address them. Most bookseller’s fundamental business requirements have really not changed in the past decade. What has changed is the extent to which information must be manipulated to suit different applications, and the compressed timeframe in which this must happen to take advantage of different revenue sources. These days, a successful bookseller’s list of requirements almost universally includes Internet sales venues and email.

Yet, there is really very little available to help them take advantage of these venues directly. This is surprising to me — these are not trivial issues! Most companies seem to either take a one-size-fits-all approach to their software, or they focus on a particular aspect of the business and ignore others. I’ve looked at quite a bit of 3rd-party software in the past year, and there are some very good programs out there. But few programs I’ve seen address these issues in ways that are intuitively obvious. They often seem to be logical extensions of a particular business, focusing and relying upon a specific methodology. Seller Engine is a good example of this, in that the program itself is an excellent piece of software, but it relies almost exclusively upon Amazon.com to provide intrinsic value to its users.

So, the short answer to your question is: BwPro makes it possible for a bookseller to overcome more obstacles by making the broadest possible use of their records, with the least amount of effort, in an understandable and comfortable environment. That’s a mouthful, but that’s how I see it.

What do you foresee in the near future for booksellers?

Today, it’s frankly a mess out there. If a bookseller wants to sell books simultaneously on Alibris, ABE, Amazon, eBay, and on their own web site, they must be very technically savvy, or they must utilize a distribution service like Chuck Vilnis’ excellent BookRouter system, or they must use multiple applications to do it — applications that usually don’t interact with one another very well, if at all. There’s a lot of frustration out there, and it’s no surprise. I get calls from dealers all the time wanting help doing one thing or another, and it’s usually something that should be simple for them to do, but it isn’t because their software didn’t provide any way to do it.

So, BwPro tries to make it easy for sellers to get as much work done in one place as possible, without having to jump from one program to another. I think future bookselling applications are going to have to address this if their creators expect merchants to use them. The “Service-Us” approach for client software is not a sustainable model, and companies who continue this approach in their designs will not survive the long haul, even if their programs are free.

In my humble opinion, BwPro positions a bookseller nicely for the next round of business and technological development. Those sellers who can quickly and easily manipulate their data in different ways are going to have distinct business advantages over those who cannot. In particular, the ability to manage the volume of information associated with collectible books on a field-oriented basis will become increasingly important as existing venues expand their infrastructures and data-handling capabilities. Ebay is a good example of this.

What does the software cost?

BookWriter Professional sells for $129.95. The setup has not yet been finalized, but I am accepting advance orders as I’ve had many inquiries and I need to cut down on my email volume somehow. Current BookWriter Web users will have their entire BwWeb purchase price applied to their BwPro purchase, and any new users who place an order prior to rollout will receive the BookWriter Web software as part of the package. Given the current state of development, I expect to have BwPro ready to launch in 30 days or less.

Tom, thanks again for an interesting interview. Where can dealers go to find more information?

You’re most welcome, I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you again! Additional information about the software can be found athttp://www.bookwritersoftware.com/bwpro/bwpro.htm.

#services #Software

BookWriter Web for HomeBase Interview with Tom Sawyer

BookWriter Web was created by Thomas A. Sawyer, co-founder and software designer for Interloc/Alibris, as well as the creator of the UIEE information exchange format used by booksellers worldwide. Tom was previously interviewed in two IOBA articles (http://www.ioba.org/newsletter/archive/v8/tomsawyer.html andhttp://www.ioba.org/newsletter/archive/v9/bwwebinterview1.html). In this latest interview, Shirley Bryant asked Tom about the latest version of the BookWriter Web software, which is compatible with ABE’s popular HomeBase program, and how the program has been received to date by booksellers.

Tom, is BookWriter Web being used successfully by dealers as you hoped?

Yes, sales are good and the program is doing its job well. I think the nicest compliment I received was from a dealer who was also an Interloc subscriber years ago. She called me up and thanked me for creating BwWeb. She said: “It’s just like the old days. I get a message from someone wanting to buy a book. I write back and sometimes they call back and we have a nice chat. I sell a book and get a new customer — and I don’t have to pay anything to anyone!”

That’s encouraging! What kind of results are dealers experiencing overall?

Overall it’s been very good, but some unexpected things have happened too. For example, one dealer used BwWeb to compose his entire stock of some 45,000 books and prints into web pages, 5 per page, and we then did a Google site submission for him after he uploaded the pages.

A couple of weeks later, he called and demanded to know how he could get his listings REMOVED from Google, because he was overwhelmed with orders! I told him he could remove his own pages easily, but as far as Google went, I had no idea how to pull listings from their cache, and I didn’t even know if it was possible. Boy, was he angry! He accused me of creating a monster, told me that I didn’t know what I was doing, complained he had to go out and spend money and hire people, he was going to miss his vacation, and basically said I had ruined his life.

I take it he wasn’t prepared to handle the order volume.

That’s an understatement — not by a long shot. He had been selling 3-5 books a day on-line through listing services like ABE, a comfortable and manageable number for a Mom & Pop shop. But when that number hit over 100 orders a day, his blood pressure shot up correspondingly. If he’s reading this, Sir, I’m sorry, but that’s how it goes sometimes. There are many things over which I have no control.

Do all dealers who use your program experience these kind of results?

No, certainly not — this was an anomaly. The average results are pretty much what you’d expect: Some dealers get a few orders, some do reasonably well with sustained order volume, some do very well all at once, and a few, like this gentleman, do unbelievably well. This dealer happened to have really distinctive books that were priced well, beautifully described, and as it turned out, were in demand.

What kind of books is he selling?

All kinds, I think. For example, he said he sold a 1st/1st Madonna’s Sex for $425 to a gentleman in the UK who bought it for his wife’s Madonna memorabilia collection. Out of curiosity, I checked around a bit and found that price is about in the middle of the range for that particular book. But, it also appears that most of them are languishing in the listing service databases. None of the ones I looked at are appearing in Google search results, though there may be some way further down in the results list. I believe most of the people who actually want to buy this book have no idea the copies in the ABE database are there.

Personally I think it’s odd that ABE has decided to tout the fact that they consider themselves “the best kept secret on the Internet” or words to that effect. “List your books with us because no one knows we exist???” What’s that all about?

What do you think is the reason for the variation in results among dealers using BwWeb?

I think it mainly due to how distinctive the books are, how fairly they’re priced, and how well they’re described — you know, the things that have always mattered. Most dealers see a slow, steady increase in orders coming from out of the blue as they get more records listed on their sites. The dealer I just mentioned was an exception. In retrospect, given the number of books he posted in his site, I probably should have warned him, but then again I don’t have a crystal ball either.

But we’re talking mainstream retail here, and no one can predict what will happen. Remember, it’s a World-Wide Web, after all. Only a handful of people have ever heard of sites like ABE. When you sell a book to an ABE customer, you’re selling that book to a person belonging to a small minority of the total buying public, the ones who know enough to “go” there in the first place. Most don’t know, and don’t care to know.

This seems to fly in the face of common knowledge among booksellers. Are you saying most people don’t know how to use their computers to find web sites?

That’s exactly what I’m saying. The steps required to enter a URL in a browser’s address box are mysterious to most people. In some computers, the address box doesn’t even appear in the browser by default. And, most people who want to buy something could care less about web sites as such.

The vast majority of people who want to buy something over the Internet type what they want to buy into a search engine, like Google. There’s even a Google search box appearing now in the standard version of Internet Explorer. THAT’s what people use to find things. Where they end up is mostly a matter of chance.

But, if your books don’t appear in the search results, there’s very little chance the customer will find them — how could they?

Is this due to a lack of skill on the part of the average computer user?

Despite all the hoopla and hype, we’re still in the pioneering stages of the computer and information revolution. If the dot-com boom and bust taught us anything, it’s the same old saw: “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

The level of sophistication among the average home computer user is still very low. Not many people “go” anywhere as such, because they simply don’t know how. I know, it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. Some customers are savvy enough to type a URL into the browser’s address line, but they’ll usually go to Amazon, because that’s the company they’ve heard of. For the most part, the rest don’t exist as far as they’re concerned. Ask most people what Internet companies they’ve heard of, and they’ll probably name two: Amazon and eBay. Beyond these, the rest are just a blur.

But — and this is the really important point — for the average bookseller, big or small, promoting a business as such does little to sell books. The only people who care about a business are in-house, and their view of reality is distorted. Real people want what they want, and they want it now! If a dealer’s books aren’t showing up in search results, they’re just spinning their wheels trying to promote themselves.

Why do some pages show up in search results and other don’t?

Believe it or not, the majority of web pages I’ve looked at, particularly those done in Microsoft Front Page and DreamWeaver, are not coded correctly. Microsoft is the main offender when it comes to violating the HTML specification. Many pages aren’t indexed in search engines because they violate some basic rules of the HTML spec, or they’ve offended the page ranking system in some way through spamming or omissions. I know what spiders look for and I’ve coded BwWeb to produce web pages that search engine spiders just LOVE to index. They slurp them up like a bear eating honey.

But even more fundamentally, most dealers have their on-line records in Microsoft ODBC databases, which effectively hides their records from search engines. Very few databases are indexed by search engines! And, even if they were, the computer cannot differentiate the information properly to create a meaningful abstract. Remember, computers still can’t read and interpret information in context. Relevance is extremely important to page ranking systems.

So, for a dealer who has a web site now, but has their books in an on-line database, you’re saying their books aren’t showing up in Google search results?

Generally, that’s true. Any dealer can find out very easily. All they have to do is type the title of one of their distinctive books into a Google search and look at the results. Chances are good their book won’t be listed at all. That’s why BwWeb is so important — it not only gets their books listed, it places them in the top results by satisfying all of the criteria of the search engine’s page ranking system.

Can you give an example of books that show up and books that don’t?

Sure, I’ll use the example I have in the BwWeb site: Let’s pretend you want to buy a copy of Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay. Go to the ABE.com site and type the title in their search box. You’ll find about 20 or so.

Now go to Google and type the same thing. You’ll find my mother’s book listed as #1 out of nearly 5,000 hits. Not only that, you’ll only find a couple of others listed. None of the ABE copies show up. You can do the same thing for any book.

What about Froogle? Isn’t that supposed to fix the database indexing problem?

No. Froogle is another vast electronic mall, and like any other web site, you have to know enough to “go” there to find what you want. And, there are other problems with Froogle. For example, every record you send them must have a URL associated with it, which means your record must already “be” somewhere else. Froogle will not close a sale for you.

If you do the same test with Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay by performing a Froogle exact match search, and then do the same thing on Google, you’ll immediately notice one of the books listed in Froogle by a dealer linked to the TomFolio database is suddenly missing from the Google search results. That’s because the record was uploaded to Froogle, not spidered from a TomFolio static web page. To get the same results in the main Google index and achieve top rankings, you have to have web pages that meet their page ranking requirements. That’s what BwWeb produces.

So, BwWeb composes web pages that insure a presence in the main Google search engine?

Correct. A significant presence. And it composes the pages automatically. To compose ten thousand pages, you select a layout, match up your book record fields, and click on the Start button. That’s it. When you upload the pages to your web site and submit the site to Google, you’re done.

One of the reasons TIAS.com does so well is that they were savvy enough to create a “live feed” into the Google system. I have great respect for Phil Davies (CEO of Tias.com) and the people he works with. They are a top-shelf, class act and I recommend them without hesitation, especially for dealers who sell antiques and collectibles as well as books.

But, TIAS also charges for transactions and services. As a general rule, book dealers need to look closely at all of their hidden costs before committing to any sales venue that imposes commissions and monthly fees. “Everybody’s doing it” is not a meaningful rationalization.

Does this work for other things besides books and collectibles?

Oh boy, it sure does! I can give you a good example here: Back in January, I set up a very simple web site for a well-known forensic specialist who wanted to gain some exposure. I did some test searches beforehand and got about 15,000 hits for “Forensic Consulting Specialists.” I then used BwWeb to compose his final pages, and submitted the site to Google.

About 7-10 days later, I did another test search for “Forensic Consulting Specialists” and lo and behold: His site was ranked #1 out of nearly 15,000 hits! It still is. That experience told me the premises upon which my software was based were sound, and could be applied across the board to any product or service.

What’s the main advantage of putting our book records into web pages?

Many, many advantages, but aside from the utter simplicity of it all and the world-wide exposure your books will receive, the real practical advantage is the savings of all the “hidden” costs of doing business. Remember: there are no middlemen in this scenario. The customer finds your books and buys them from you directly. It’s what I call a “Direct Find/Buy Relationship.” I personally think it’s the best way to do business. There are no commissions, no fees, no markups — none of that.

It’s also a way to regain true independence from middlemen. That’s why I was so keen to get this out the door and start presenting it to dealers. It seemed like the right product at the right time.

What does it actually cost to do this?

Aside from the one-time cost of BwWeb, the only on-going cost is the web site itself, and that all depends on how much storage space you buy. Remember, a web site is nothing more than a directory on someone’s disk drive connected to the Internet through a server.

These days, the average hosting site charges less than $10.00 a month for 250 MB of storage space, or more. Competition is fierce among hosting companies and this has really driven prices down. Some BwWeb users have set up sites on some of the free servers out there, but I’m not yet convinced doing this is a good idea.

Can non-technical dealers do their own site setup?

Yes, most can, it’s pretty easy. But for those who don’t know how or who don’t want to be bothered or spend the time learning how, I’ve worked out a good arrangement with a company called Site Flite (http://www.siteflite.com/ ). They will do all the busy work for a dealer: They’ll set up the web site, register a domain name, perform the site submission, etc. Their rates are reasonable and it’s a one-time cost. They’ll even design a layout and compose and upload your pages for you on an on-going basis, if that’s what you want. They’re the only company who has satisfied all of my criteria. I’ve been really pleased with their performance so far.

What about the dealer’s home page? How do BwWeb’s pages integrate into it?

They don’t. BwWeb’s pages exist as independent, static entities. If the dealer already has a home page, then all that needs to happen is that a link to the home page gets automatically placed on every page BwWeb composes, and a corresponding link to the BwWeb pages gets placed on the home page. BwWeb has link generators that will do this automatically.

But — if a dealer doesn’t have a home page, guess what? None is needed! This may seem to defy common sense, but I must stress again: It’s not about the dealer or their business. No one cares. The only thing a customer wants is the book he/she wants to buy. The pages BwWeb composes containing the dealer’s book records take care of that very nicely. Not surprisingly, people will go to the pages that contain the book records in which they’re interested, not to a home page that talks about someone’s business.

What about images? Does BwWeb handle these as well?

Indeed it does. It will read images and integrate them perfectly within each composed page. You can control the layout, the number of images, their size, alignment and other variables.

What about shopping cart and payment systems? Can BwWeb handle these as well?

Yes, it can. Using such systems amounts to adding a small piece of HTML to BwWeb, which the payment company provides. You simply paste this into the BwWeb setup and the rest is automatic. You can use PayPal or a credit card processing system through a merchant account with VeriSign or whoever you choose to use.

You can even add multiple choices, as I did with BwWeb’s own web site — it allows you to pay by credit card, by PayPal, or send e-mail to us directly or just mail a check. I’ve helped a lot of dealers set up this “mysterious” aspect of their web pages and, like anything else, once you’ve done it, you don’t even think about it anymore.

What database programs will BwWeb work with?

It reads any standard Microsoft Access database, which means it works with HomeBase and most other programs like it using standard, off-the-shelf database engines. It also reads BookMaster, Record Manager, and BookMate databases directly. It will also work with a simple tab-delimited or UIEE file, so there’s very little it won’t work with. There is no import/export process required.

Can you create more than one layout?

You can create an infinite number of them. The program automatically remembers everything that was done last, so you never lose your settings. I also designed the program so that users can exchange setup files with one another. I know of two dealers who are doing this as they decided to work collaboratively on a common site containing both of their books.

Why aren’t more dealers using your software?

It’s an interesting conundrum. When a dealer puts their first batch of composed web pages up on their site and their books get indexed by Google and they start making sales, their first reaction is NOT to go tell the dealer across the street all about it. When you get sales and you don’t have to pay any listing fees or commissions to get them, that’s a real competitive advantage. There have been a number of passing references to BwWeb here and there, but by and large, dealers are just quietly selling books and not trumpeting the fact to their peers. And, in retrospect I suppose that’s not a surprise either.

I should also mention: I’m not recommending that dealers should do this INSTEAD of using listing services — I’m suggesting that they should do it IN ADDITION TO using listing services. Dealers should use every resource they have to sell books, and abandoning a source of revenue is never a good idea, unless it’s just not cost or time effective.

BwWeb creates a viable alternative. It creates a direct means of selling books to the general, world-wide public, not just the few collectors or OP aficionados who know sites like ABE even exist. This is what commercialization of the Internet was ultimately intended to accomplish — the ability for a consumer to directly find and buy what they want.

What do you see for the near future with respect to BwWeb?

Booksellers have been good to me, and I love working with them. I’ve been fortunate enough to be involved with a group of honest, intelligent and hard-working people, for whom I have a lot of warm feelings. But business conditions in the trade are grim right now. I’m concerned about some dealers’ ability to survive at all.

It’s fine to be a bookseller because you love books, or you like the community, or you enjoy providing reading treasures to people. But when a business is in trouble and finds itself in survival mode, it’s suddenly all about sales — nothing else matters.

I created BookWriter Web because it really can get books in front of buyers. It can help dealers achieve independence from listing services. It can get around the penny-seller problem. It can help dealers re-create the customer bases they had years ago. In short, I think it has the potential to do a lot of good for a group I think deserves a significant boost.

I’ve had numerous conversations with dealers in the past few weeks and most tell me the same, sad story: business is lousy, and a lot of it is due to screw-ups on the part of the listing services, including Amazon. So, I’ve extended the sale deadline for BwWeb to May 31st, just because so many dealers have told me they’re short of cash after paying their taxes on April 15th. And, as before, the entire purchase cost will be applied to the complete BookWriter suite when it rolls out.

Tom, thanks very much for this interview. Where can dealers go to find more information?

You’re most welcome, and thank you for the opportunity to speak with you again! Interested dealers can visit http://www.bookwritersoftware.com. I’ve added the ability for interested dealers to download the software and try it before they buy it. There are also some sample pages up there so people can get an idea of the range of possibilities the program offers.™

HomeBase is a Trademark of Advanced Book Exchange ™ BookMaster, Record Manager and BookMate are Trademarks of Alibris

#bookwriter #Software

Tom Sawyer – BookWriter Web

BookWriter Web: Getting Your Inventory Where it Belongs — In Front of Buyers!

Tom Sawyer is a co-founder of Interloc and Alibris. He served as Chief Software Engineer from 1993-2001. Over the years, he has developed many widely used programs for booksellers, including BookMaster, Record Manager, BookMate, and the UIEE format many of us use every day. Mr. Sawyer is now preparing to release BookWriter, which may well become the standard against which the next generation of bookseller software is measured. However, a little serendipity and a lot of work have yielded a surprise! Read on…* * * * * *

Tom, I was prepared to interview you about the release of BookWriter, but it sounds like BookWriter Web is actually a different program?

Yes — and no. BookWriter Web is now and will always be a working part of the complete BookWriter program. But, 3/4 of the way through its development, something unexpected happened: it became clear that the program was far more powerful than we had imagined, doing things we didn’t think could be done, producing results in seconds that would normally take hours or days to accomplish. I was floored.

After some discussion, we decided to retain these features in the full BookWriter program but also to immediately release BookWriter Web as a stand-alone program (at lower cost) for both BookMate™ and HomeBase™ users. Given the current state of the online book trade and the fact that any dealer with a BookMaster, Record Manager or BookMate-compatible database can use BwWeb immediately, we felt it was important to make this available to dealers as quickly as possible, particularly in time for the holiday season. The Alibris-compatible version is ready now and the HomeBase-compatible version will be released shortly.

What exactly does the program do?

BwWeb is a multi-functional composer that makes it very easy to effectively present your stock in venues like the web and auctions, using the data you have already entered. It will create just about any kind of document you can imagine, but where it really shines is its ability to compose complete, ready-to-publish web pages and auctions, with integrated images. It composes pages one right after the other, in sequence, and I’ll explain more later why that’s important. The general answer to your question is that the program’s main objective is to help dealers sell more books.

How does it work?

BwWeb retrieves selected records from your database and populates pre-defined locations in other files with your records. You can produces web pages, auctions, catalogs, tables, export files — just about anything you can think of. You can work from a Hit List, ranges of records, or select records directly within the program. There is a very wide range of options available for composition including automatic image layout and sizing. And, it displays the composed results instantly — you can preview what you’re about to do before you do it, to make sure everything is just the way you want it.

If I may say so, this sounds almost too good to be true. What are the advantages of using BwWeb?

I’ve spent a lot of time doing pragmatic testing and I’ve come to some interesting conclusions. Some may not agree with me, but I have good reasons for believing this:

1: When the vast majority of potential Internet customers want to buy an OP book, they go first to Yahoo, Google, AOL, MSN, or any of the major search engines that pop up on their computers when they first turn them on, or when they launch their Internet browser. They type the name of what they want into the Search box, hoping to find it. Usually, they either don’t find it or they end up at Amazon or B&N through a collateral link. This seems to happen the majority of the time and it’s common sense, isn’t it?

2: Practically no one knows anything about on-line OP book listing services. One out of a thousand people recognize the names ABE, BookFinder, ChooseBooks, etc. It’s an insulated little world and I believe this will take many years to change significantly. Alibris is far ahead of the pack in this regard because of the vast sums spent on advertising, branding and promotion, but their records don’t show up in search results either.

3: Most book dealers put their books in listing service databases. These databases are not indexed by major search engines. Hence, your database records do not appear in search results either.

So, to answer your question, there are many advantages to using BookWriter Web, but certainly one of the most important is the ability to get your inventory out in front of the people who want to buy it, without having to rely on sheer luck or having an OP book listing service to do it for you.

A lot of book dealers have created their own web sites but their sales results haven’t been what they had hoped. How will BookWriter Web improve this situation?

Frankly, I’ve looked at the source code for a lot of book dealer’s web sites and only a handful are actually set up correctly for proper search engine indexing. Most of them have their book records stored in non-indexable database files. That’s no surprise, that’s what most web programmers have been trained to do.

But, the reality is that in order for buyers to find your books through search engines, you have to have a significant presence in the search results that appear before potential customers. The only way to do that is to make it possible for your inventory to be indexed automatically by major search engines. This requires that your web pages be composed and structured in a particular way, and that the information to be indexed by the search engine must reside in your web pages, not merely in a Microsoft database or other “private” file.

Can you give me an example of what you mean by “significant presence?”

Ok, for example: In my spare time I created a web site for my parent’s antique & collectibles business called “B&D Unique Antiques.” I hosted the site through TIAS.com and made sure the pages were set up correctly so they would be properly indexed by search engines. Long ago before my time, they used to have kerosene heaters in automobiles. Suppose you were an antique car collector and wanted to buy one online? If you go to Yahoo/Google and type: “antique kerosene auto heater” you’ll get about 600 results — and B&D Unique Antiques inventory will appear near the top of the results list. We did not pay a cent for that exposure. So, B&D Unique Antiques has a significant presence not because we’re offering stuff no one else has, but because our inventory exists as static web pages that can be properly indexed by search engines. It makes all the difference in the world when it comes to sales.

On the other hand, if you go to any of the “mainstream” antique sites like Ruby Lane or CurioScape and type in the name of what you want in their own little Search box, you’ll probably find it right away. BUT, you’d need to know enough to go there in the first place, wouldn’t you? Most people don’t know anything about Ruby Lane or CurioScape or any of the “mainstream” antique sites. Like bookselling sites, they also live in their own insulated little world. So, since most people type what they want to buy rather than where they want to go to buy it, the majority of people who don’t know anything about these places won’t find them. But, if your records are properly presented, they will find your inventory.

It’s the same situation for booksellers. Here’s another example: A fairly common book is: “FDR: Centenary Remembrance,” published in 1982. Go to Yahoo/Google and type: “FDR Centenary Remembrance” and again, you’ll see our book listed near the top of the search results, even though there are hundreds of copies available on ABE and other listing service sites. None of those show up.

Very interesting indeed! Does this mean our inventory records will exist online as a series of static web pages and not as a single database file?

That’s exactly what it means. Unlike a database whose contents are “hidden” from internet search engines, pre-composed pages allow your records to be directly indexed by search engines. This means people looking in search engines for specific books will find your records. However, they will not find those belonging to other dealers whose records cannot be properly indexed — because they exist only in online databases.

Aside from containing the text, how do the pages created by BookWriter Web insure that they will be properly indexed by search engines?

Well, aside from the formatted text describing your records, you can also instruct the program to include an explicit Document Type Declaration and a complete set of formal Meta Tags in your composed web pages. These are extremely important for proper indexing and will insure that your records appear in the proper categories when retrieved by search engine robots. You can even include introductory information about your business, specialties, location, etc — and you will be found by buyers! BwWeb will even collect keywords from your records and include them as Meta Tags to provide alternative retrieval criteria for buyers who search by category rather than by title.

Don’t individual web pages require a lot of web space?

No, they don’t — that’s a common misconception. Individual, pre-composed web pages occupy about the same amount of space as a traditional web-based database and often occupy less space. Hence, there is no storage penalty to creating individual pages. However, you do need enough storage space to handle your entire inventory, but of all the things you have to pay for, web storage space is one of the cheapest.

What about retrieving and displaying web pages? Will customers experience any delays?

In fact, there is a huge performance increase over traditional ODBC database retrievals. Since each page is pre-composed, no database record retrievals are required. And, unlike an active server page that can take many seconds to compose a page on demand, pre-composed pages load instantly — there is zero latency beyond the normal load times for text and graphics. You might call it a horse-sense approach.

What about site setup and overhead? Is it expensive to do this?

Well, no, actually it’s as inexpensive as it can possibly be. There is no server software required. No “Microsoft Extensions” are needed to display database records and images. Your web site is as clean and simple as it can possibly get. You pay nothing for “development” since there is essentially nothing to develop.

If you want more sophisticated features such as a shopping cart or other interactive functionality, you’ll find that most of these features already exist elsewhere as separate, callable modules. For example, a number of services provide free shopping cart modules. The HTML can be cut and pasted right into BwWeb and it will include it in every composed page.

Why re-design the wheel and have to pay money for the privilege? There are also many excellent free search engines available (such as Atomz, PicoSearch and others) that can easily be set up to perform fast text searches on your pages. You can have the equivalent of a searchable database at zero cost and the results are splendid. By the way, the two companies I mentioned place a small logo on your search result pages if you use the free service, but there are no advertisements added. You can have an extremely fast, efficient searchable web site set up and running in a matter of minutes.

At the very least, if you still want a web programmer to set up a “custom” site and pay the extra money, fine — you can present him/her with a ready-to-publish set of web pages describing your inventory and still save yourself a bundle. You don’t have to worry about “import/export formats” — there aren’t any! You can put as many records on a page as you like, lay them out however you want, present images in a very professional manner, even include automatic links to display them full size. In a nutshell, you can do most if not all of the things you’ll find on web sites that cost their owners thousands of dollars to produce.

How about maintenance? Is it more difficult to maintain separate pages than a single database file?

Normally, yes, but in this case, No, definitely not. That’s one of the beautiful things about this program. If you update a few records and choose to update the corresponding web page(s), you do not have to upload huge database files merely to update a few records. Instead, you upload only the page(s) that have changed. Plus, your images can live anywhere on the web — you do not need to “marry” your images with a resident database server, which many database-hosting systems require. Your records exist as simple pages that you can edit or delete at any time.

In effect, you have complete freedom to locate your files wherever you like. If you decide to make changes to your pages, you are faced with a simple task instead of a complicated one. Simply make the desired changes to your record(s) and then re-compose only the page(s) you want to replace. A huge amount of time is saved over the traditional “Front Page” approach of making changes to “master” pages and then being compelled to edit (and test) all of the subsequent branches in your web.

Also, keep in mind that I’m not recommending that dealers should do this INSTEAD of using listing services — I’m suggesting that they should do it IN ADDITION TO using listing services.

You mentioned marrying images with database records. Will BookWriter Web do this automatically?

Yes, it will. All you have to do is be sure to name your image files in a certain way, then tell BwWeb where the files are. It automatically scans the images and matches them up to the database records. BookMaster, Record Manager, BookMate and HomeBase users can now compose complete image-populated pages without having to do anything other than what I just described.

What about auctions? How does one use BookWriter Web to compose auctions?

In practice, there are three things that take a lot of time to produce a good auction: (1) composing the presentation, (2) creating a good auction title that fits into the space allowed, and (3) choosing the best auction category. BookWriter Web will do the first two automatically. The code it produces can be dropped right into Mr. Lister or whatever auction software you choose, and it contains a flexible Auction Title Composer that intelligently constructs titles based on the fields you specify. It works pretty well, too. My own tests here have seen auction productivity skyrocket as a result of using it to perform these two labor-intensive chores.

There are many dealers who know nothing about HTML or web sites. Is this complicated to do? How would a dealer go about setting up a web site as you’ve described?

Everyone does things somewhat differently, and style is a major component when establishing an on-line business identity. BookWriter Web both expects and encourages creativity. Getting started is easy: You can use any of the example templates and document layouts supplied with BwWeb to organize your information the way you want it in a general fashion. You can then save the template and layout as your own files and customize them precisely the way you want them to “fine tune” your on-line presentation. BwWeb lets you instantly preview the results in partial or complete form, so there is never a need to “upload and review” as is normally the case with most web pages — your uploaded files will look exactly the same when viewed on-line.

In general, all you need to have is the web site itself. Once you have a place to send files, that’s really all you need. The rest is handled by the pages themselves. It is honestly just that simple.

What else will BookWriter Web do?

Well, it creates catalogs, quotes, tabular index documents, detailed records, sorted lists, delimited files for uploading to Amazon and Half.com, HTML for use in eBay auctions, archival records — the list goes on and on. You can even use it to create UIEE files that are ready to upload. It’s all a matter of setting up what you want to create, and I’ve spent a lot of effort trying to make that very easy to do. You can basically set up an infinite number of layouts and compositions and save them for use later. And, since it always saves your current settings automatically, the program is always just the way you left it the next time you run it.

I’ve also tried to include practical features that dealers will find genuinely useful. For example, there are some automatic editing options that will remove spurious punctuation, strip leading articles and things like that. These are admittedly details, but they can also add up to a lot of wasted time if you have to go back and hand-edit documents. BwWeb is targeted towards producing ready-to-use results.

Is the program complicated to operate?

This program is unlike anything I’ve ever produced. I’ve been told it looks a bit intimidating at first glance, but I think that’s because there’s a lot packed into a small area. I wanted a program that was right in front of me in toto, not hidden behind two dozen sub-menus. The learning curve is pretty short, given that you can start composing immediately by using the examples we’ve included. I’ve put a lot of work into laying the program out sensibly. There is a comprehensive Help system that describes the entire program in detail and how to use it. There’s even a Tutor that literally walks you through the entire program, describing what each control does and how it can affect your composition. My mother has no trouble operating it.

What about technical support. What happens when a dealer needs help?

E-mail support is provided at no cost to all users. We’re pretty good about responding quickly to inquiries and we take them seriously (though I’ve personally gotten behind in my correspondence lately). Additional pay-as-you-go support is available for dealers with more involved issues. We’ll also be offering pager-based flat-rate and long-term support services for dealers who wish to develop custom applications or who want someone “on call” to help when problems arise.

What does BookWriter Web cost?

We’re offering the program for $79.95 through December 31, 2002. Dealers who subsequently decide to order the complete BookWriter program will receive full credit towards their purchase through December 31.

Where can dealers go to find out more information?

Dealers can visit http://home.rochester.rr.com/bdunique/bwweb/bookwriterweb.htm for additional information and a link to order the software. The Alibris-compatible version is available now and it has been tested extensively. As I mentioned earlier, a HomeBase version will also be ready shortly. We’ll be issuing some announcements at the appropriate times, when I have completed software in hand, ready to install.

Tom, this is really very exciting. I appreciate your sharing this with us!

Thank you. It was my privilege to participate.

™ BookWriter is a trademark of TAS Software Innovations © UIEE is Copyright 1989-2002 TAS Software Innovations ™ BookMaster, BookMate, Interloc, and Record Manager are trademarks of Alibris ™ HomeBase is a trademark of Advanced Book Exchange Inc.

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