What Is Wrong With Today’s Amazon?

What will happen now that Amazon owns ABE?

Generally speaking, AbeBooks sellers who list on Amazon are hoping there will be no automated migration of AbeBooks listings to Amazon; and AbeBooks sellers who do not list on Amazon are, in the main, hoping for the opposite.

We would love to see Amazon’s techno-wizards reduce ABE’s glitches and help them facilitate the long-promised optional exclusion of new books and/or PODs from searches.

Beyond that, our hopes and speculations are widely scattered.

In the meantime, Amazon could actually use some help from ABE in the following areas.

Dreadful Seller Storefront

The left hand portion of the Amazon Seller Storefront screen is decent. This includes the Info & Policies, a feedback summary, and a link to more information (though this is primarily Amazon’s own Returns and Shipping statements).

The manner in which Amazon listings are displayed is the dreadful part. This page is clearly aimed at the visually-oriented shopper, but it fails miserably in execution. This portion of the Storefront consists solely of product images with the title and author given in hypertext. This limits the number of listings per page, but the most serious drawback is that the screen in many cases consists of blank “no image available” place-holders (most unattractive), or, perhaps even worse, it shows whichever image Amazon has assigned to that book. For newer books this will be the stock photo, but for others it will be a former “customer share” image that Amazon has copied and placed in the “official” image spot (which is then beyond the control of the original contributor). This image may or may not resemble the book being offered. From the main Product Page on Amazon, it is easier for shoppers to guess that the image probably does not represent all the listings, but when coupled with the title on the Seller Storefront, the image may be quite misleading. This is especially true when the shopper clicks on a title. The page that comes up resembles the main Product Page, but the links to the listings page show only the one listing. At this point, only someone well familiar with the Amazon system will realize that the image shown often does not represent the book being offered.

The Storefront layout has the potential of making an interesting display for those sellers who do make extensive use of image share, but that potential is generally not realized. The only instance of the seller’s image accompanying their title on the Storefront will be in the case of Created Product Pages (those deliberately created online—not the page images created automatically upon upload).

Although Amazon started out as a bookselling site, its spell check function in the caption and notes for shared images (kudos there) does not recognize some common bookselling terms such as endpaper. The caption and notes also do not allow some rather crucial words, such as binding, spine, jacket, and title.

Too Many Roll-Ups

Amazon’s method of accommodating uploads of non-ISBN books from various sellers often results in a horrendous array of Product Information Pages. Since date, rather than publisher, is used as the primary identifier to separate various editions of the same title, books from any publisher that include a print date (as opposed to those that give only the original copyright date) may run into dozens of Product Pages for the same title. It also means that an attempt to create a page for a Grosset & Dunlap reprint that uses the same date as the Little, Brown original will result in an Amazon message that the product already exists, blocking the attempt to create a separate Product Page for the reprint edition.

The date identifier is not always a negative. Sets such as the International Library of Technology may sometimes best be matched with similar copies by printing date. Date is also a reasonable divider for different editions of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook.

The emphasis on date also leads to extra Product Pages when sellers can’t determine the date of a book. They can’t leave this field blank, so they have learned to plug in such dates as 1000 or 1111. New pages are also created by including or not including subtitles, and by adding inappropriate comments to the title field (Very Good!, one page creased, etc.).

This problem is exacerbated by sellers who understand and manipulate the system by deliberately forcing new pages for their listings rather than selecting an existing ASIN and correcting any wrong information.

The result of all this is an excessive number of roll-ups and endless clicking and hunting. The Prince of the House of David, for example, has 63 Product Pages, plus a few nested roll-ups. A Kindle edition may be masking the original publisher Product Page, showing only as an “Unknown Binding” link next to the Kindle on the search results page. Furthermore, if there are several of these embedded roll-ups, even a knowledgeable shopper may have to chase around to find the complete list. These roll-up linkages sometimes result in such oddities as the product review for a 1932 first edition telling us what a great voice the 2001 talking book reader has.

Searching for a book like Stevenson’s Treasure Island is going to require a bit of experience on any search service, but Amazon’s maze is much harder to penetrate. There are over 1,000 roll-ups listed after the simple author / title search! Adding “Wyeth” as a keyword only brings it down to 28. The ordering system in the search results USUALLY leaves the empty pages last (those Product Pages with no listings), but that’s not dependable.

The author field in particular is well handled when listing directly on Amazon, or when creating a page on Amazon, allowing multiple author listings, plus illustrator, editor, photographer, etc., with each being properly identified. The pages created by seller upload are not so nice, as the following author field examples demonstrate.

Harriet.; Harvey Fuller (ill.) Ouida; Golden (Author)

Thornton W. (Thornton Waldo) (1874-1965) – Related name: Kerr, George (illus.) Burgess

The Advanced Search has a few serious shortcomings. Date refinement seldom works well, for no discernable reason.

After finding the desired Product Page, it is often troublesome locating signed copies or first printings. Ideally the Collectible division should be the place to look for these, but rampant abuse by sellers pushed Amazon to set a standard based on price. This might actually work for books of at least moderately high value, but it doesn’t work well at all for the large number of lower end collectibles, such as signed copies of common titles that make them a bit more valuable. There may be many such books that you feel should sell for $20 to $30, but they cannot be listed as Collectible in that price range. Amazon does not make it particularly easy to determine what their lower end Collectible limit is for a given book, and I have heard that these limits shift and listings get deleted.

#amazon #bookselling #standard

A Bookseller’s Tasha Tudor Remembrance

I add my voice to the many others who note the passing of Tasha Tudor with sadness. Many lives have been touched by Tasha’s art and her stories, including my own. I extend to the family and those who may have known and been close to Tasha and the kids my condolences and offer prayers and blessings upon their hearts and lives in their time of loss.

My own story with Tasha began early one morning in September of 1994 when I received a phone call from a friend in Vermont who had heard that Tasha would be doing a book signing not far from her home. A few days later I found myself, dressed in a suit (those who know me know I do not do suits often), standing in front of Tasha, with books in hand and asking if she would grace my new (just opened) used bookstore with a book signing. Unknown to me at the time was the fact that she had just severed her long time relationship with Jenny Wren Press, and her response was a simple “yes.” A few days later we talked on the phone, a date was set, a plan laid down, and the journey has not stopped.

I can only say now, in hindsight, I had little idea of the tiger’s tale I had grabbed on to. It was only a few weeks later when over 300 people showed up at my store on the most beautiful November day one could have ordered. It was only after I had sold—through phone orders, mail orders and in person—some 2,000 books that it hit me: this lady is really liked and people buy her books. I had been baptized into book selling by one of the major names in the children’s book market in a manner I had not expected. And to think I’d had the outrageous idea of inviting Tasha and both her daughters back to my store in 6 months!

In the interim I moved my store down the street and laid plans for what would turn out to be my confirmation as a bookseller. No one had ever had all three Tudor women together on stage and I now knew that this was a big deal. We called the event “A Magical Moment in Time” and held it on Mother’s Day 1995. Over 400 participants and again thousands of books later Tasha and her daughters had provided me with a truly “magical moment.”

I had moved into a 2,500 square foot space, not yet full of books, with plenty of floor space, and yet it was the only time I have ever asked people to leave the store unless they were in line to have a book signed or in line (yes, I do mean a line deeper than I have ever seen) paying for books. I actually became concerned about the safety of the situation.

On a personal note, the best gift of the day was seeing how much joy my parents had in being the personal escort and drivers for the Tudor women. Mom & Dad showed up with a very plush recreational van with bucket seats. In my youngest days, my parents operated a taxi business, at that time, in the heart of New Hampshire’s tourist destination, the White Mountains. Knowing that their own personalities would help in setting the tone with Tasha, Bethany & Efner, I left the delivery of the Tudor women to the auditorium in Nashua in their good hands. To this day my folks talk about that time and when I am in touch with Bethany and Efner they always ask for my Mom & Dad.

I have always been appreciative of what my relationship with Tasha and her daughters has meant both personally and in my business. There are many stories around Tasha and many individuals who have shared in the “Tudor Experience.” The Tudor fans are as loyal and respectful as any group of supporters and book buyers I’ve known.

The gift of art and story that Tasha created is documented in the Tasha Tudor Bibliography by John & Jill Hare. I call it the most detailed bibliography ever done on a single author. But I expect what will live beyond her creative work are the stories of Tasha, her charismatic nature, her determination and tenacity in living a life style choice that had few of the modern comforts, yet was portrayed as a simple, comfortable, fun loving, and just glorious way to live.

I expect most of us live our lives knowing that we may help or touch someone beyond our own families; Tasha touched many more than can be counted or than she herself ever knew. The theme of her work reached out to many who admired and revered Tasha. Her loyal fans will be saddened. And the book trade has been a large benefactor of Tasha Tudor’s life. Even if you do not sell children’s literature, Tasha gave reason for many to frequent bookstores who may have not entered without the Tudor appeal.

Richard Mori operates Mori Books / Just Read Books out of Milford, NH and can be contacted at http://www.moribooks.com.

Richard is also quoted in a 6/20/2008 Concord Monitor article on Tasha Tudor, which is the local newspaper closest to her Webster, NH home.

An Open Letter To The Select Committee On Security And Consitutional Affairs, Parliament Of The Repu

Dear Committee Members,

This is in regard to the proposed Second-Hand Goods Bill [B2-2008] and the effect it would have on independent booksellers in South Africa. The Independent Online Booksellers Association is an international trade association composed of professional booksellers, and we share the deep concern of our South African colleagues over this bill.

While we recognize the importance of this proposed legislation in combating illicit trade in precious metals, stolen car parts, and items of that nature, we trust the committee will recognize that used bookstores should not be lumped into the same category. Without exemption for the second-hand book trade, the required procedures would make compliance virtually impossible due to the very nature of our noble profession, and many booksellers would be faced with the difficult choice of ignoring the law or going out of business.

Thanks for your consideration, and best wishes in your deliberations.

Respectfully,

Shawn Purcell, President

and the Board of Directors of the Independent Online Booksellers Association http://www.ioba.org

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A 9/3/2008 Email Response from Paul Mills of the Southern African Book Dealers Association

Many thanks for this message of support – it is much appreciated by the committee and members of SABDA. We will add it to our submission.

I am in Parliament again tomorrow morning to listen to the committee discuss our submission. As I understand it we can only listen at this stage but cannot comment although there is a possibility that we may be asked questions.

We think we have a good chance of having books removed from the Bill.

I will keep you informed.

All the best,

Paul Mills

Clarke’s Africana and Rare Books ABA-ILAB, SABDA, IOBA

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From the 9/11/2008 Issue of Sheppard’s Confidential

South Africa: SABDA and Secondhand Goods Bill

Good news from South Africa. Cape Times has reported this week that the government is dropping all ‘books’, not just those over R100, from this legislation. As we reported in previous editions, a huge effort was mounted by the SABDA, on behalf of all the whole book trade, to win this point. This shows that trade organisations can be very effective and why members of the book trade should join an association at the earliest opportunity.

Geoff Klass of Collectors Treasury told Sheppard’s Confidential, ‘I described the attempt to include second-hand books as being the equivalent of using a sledgehammer to squash an ant. This did cause a ripple of laughter in the otherwise rather staid and humourless Parliamentary Committee!. We are one of the most over-regulated societies, and any concession on the part of Government is a welcome step towards restoring sanity and balance in the process of administering the law.’

Owner of Clarke’s Africana & Rare Books and member of SABDA, Paul Mills, said the removal of books from the list was a “triumph”. SABDA had been “positively received” at the last meeting, he said. ‘It had been a collaborative effort by SABDA on behalf of the entire trade.’