"Our Product Technically is the Website" Newly Expanded Version

In "An Interview with Biblio's Kevin Donaldson" in BookThink, Donaldson brilliantly defines the true nature of the book listing services and in doing so clearly shows why book collectors would be better served using his (and some other smaller listing services), rather than the Big 3.

"We have six people here. They are mostly people who deal with daily customer support, bookseller support, accounting and product development. By that we mean web site development because our product technically is the website, whereas the seller's product is obviously their inventory. We have to keep the website running efficiently and make it useful for users. There's that real fine line between what's important to the seller and what's important to the customer. We juggle those two things every day."

Unfortunately, ABE, Alibris and Amazon, the Big 3, are of the opposite opinion, ie that they are the be all and end all of the relationship between the book and the collector. Their materialistic, corporate mentality counts the individual, independent, small business man and women (who actually hold the books and only list the books through the Big 3 as a method of selling the books to the collector) as an annoying necessary middle man, whereas the reality is that it is the Big 3 and other listing services which are the middle men.

And he has much more of value to say, do yourself a favour and read it. Then you'll understand why I and other independents are leaving ABE, Alibris and Amazon in droves and moving over to Biblio.

Update to this post -- Compare the above with the pomposity of the smallest of the Big 3

In "An Interview with Alibris' A.J. Kohn" in BookThink, the interviewer asks Kohn:

"Can you give us a brief overview of how bookseller "vetting" for listing books on your site has changed over the years?... I look back [to the regulations the interviewer had to meet in order to list on Alibris] and think how much I had to learn and am still learning every day in this business. Do you think sites in general are admitting people too easily, perhaps before they've had an opportunity to learn anything about the trade?"

Kohn, with all the arrogance and pomposity one can imagine, explains, "Well, there is an issue with that, clearly. We are very strict in this regard. Number one, there are some sellers that we don't work with, particularly 'Spider Sellers'. I don't know if that's a term that is widely known throughout the industry, but these are sellers who will essentially crawl other seller's inventories, then list other seller's books themselves for a little bit higher price. When they get an order they just send an email to the bookseller saying, 'Hey, can you ship this book for me?' We know who these people are and we don't work with them. It's not something that we want to support.

"We are also pretty hard on International Editions of textbooks. We're happy to sell them, but you have to list them with the correct ISBN number. If you are using a U.S. number for an international textbook it's just a bait-and-switch, and we are really not interested in doing that to our customer base."

[Now then, remember his comments about being "very strict" in regulating newcomers to Alibris? Watch how he now contradicts that assertion.] "Outside of that, I can't say there is a "screening process" per se. We are willing to give people a chance. Basically we say come on board, and if we don't have a history with you, generally the feeling is that you are innocent until proven guilty. We are going to believe you are coming on board as a professional seller until you show us otherwise. At that point, we'll give you counseling and warnings, and if all else fails, we'll ask you to leave. We like to have a positive view of the people coming to us, hoping that they are coming with knowledge and a true desire to do well."

"Counselling and warnings"?!?!?

My god he sounds like a 19th Century school marm. But well, that's just my opinion, yours may vary.