(Newly revised)
Just One Good Reason (of many) to Buy Your Books Direct
from the Seller, Rather than through ABE
By Bruce Tober
Copyright © 2006 Bruce Tober - All Rights Reserved
Books at Star Dot Star is no longer listing our inventory on ABE.
And we are not alone. As of April 3 many dealers stopped listing with ABE altogether. And others just reduced their
listings to their cheapest stock. Read why.
ABE is increasingly becoming seller (and therefore buyer) unfriendly. There have
been various problems for antiquarian, rare and out of print booksellers on ABE for a couple of years now. But
the latest is probably the most important in terms of our (and your) financial situation.
As of 3 April 2006 ABE forcibly took over all Visa and MasterCard credit card processing on all orders through
its sites. And it charges its booksellers between 3.5 and 5.5% (depending on which country the sale comes from)
compared with the 1 or 2% we had been paying for our own
banks' credit card processing services.
This will:
A. Result in those of us who have our own credit card processing facilities either to have new and significantly
higher processing fees from the banks from which we contract those facilities (because of the lowered, significantly
lowered in some cases, volume of transactions) or will lose them entirely, which will result in problems with our
own websites and the other listing services we subscribe to.
And/or
B. Result in many of us having to raise our prices on ABE to compensate for the increased costs of operation on
that site.
And/or
C. Result in many of the more expensive books being removed from ABE by their sellers who are and will continue
to list them in alternative listing services and, of course on their own sites.
I've never ordered very expensive books through ABE, so I don't know first hand, but those who have done so, have
had to go through hoops when at ABE's electronic commerce procedure.
Other recent problematic ABE policies include :
A. Hiding dealer contact details (not removing them, just making them more difficult to find);
B. The "Free Shipping" promotion in which many of the dealers offering the "free" shipping
have two ABE accounts with the same inventory on both but the account which offers the "free" shipping
puts a hefty premium on the price of the book compared with the same book sold from their other account;
C. The "New Books" button and moreover the increasing emphasis of ABE to list new books, Print-On-Demand
books and recent reprints;
D. The use of Muze database standard descriptions rather than descriptions of the actual book on offer (dealers
can opt out of this but most don't know or don't bother to do so);
E. And the use of standard pictures of the title rather than pictures of the actual book on offer (dealers can
opt out of this but most don't know or don't bother to do so)
All of these policies appear to be the steps ABE is taking to implement its new business model which appears to
be to be a clone of Amazon, with a focus on new books.
With library budgets (not to mention personal budgets) already stretched, this is certainly not welcome news.
So what can be done?
The simple answer is to buy directly from the bookseller of your choice. Many/most of us have our own websites.
Many of us list on multiple listing services (Biblio, ZVAB/Choosebooks, IOBAbooks, etc).
The best way of shopping is to comparison shop, at least when the booksellers you normally trade with don't have
the materials for which you're searching. There are at least two facilities for doing so; AddAll and Bookfinder (BF). Personally
I prefer the former, (and have done since I found out about it). I find it easier to configure and faster in its
searches.
I now prefer it also, because ABE has bought BF. And while ABE promises to keep BF independent, ABE has made lots
of promises before and broken them.
And recently it has been brought to my attention that with ABE's BF you can enter
a title in either its classic display (which you can only do after changing the preferences in the menu at the
bottom of the page) or its new (since about the time of ABE's purchase of BF) display (which is now the default
display) and get two totally different results.
Entering the title, for example, Investigaciones
y conjeturas de Claudio Mendoza, in the classic display shows results
that apparently includes copies priced at from $7.86 to $11.80. But enter the same title in the new display and
ONLY four megalisters' copies of the book are shown with prices from $90.74 to $181.79. But AddAll without having to make
any configuration changes shows all available copies with prices from $7.86 all the way up to $423.34, which brings
up a whole other discussion we'll pursue another day.
But whichever listing service search you use, when you find the item you're looking
for, click on the Buy It Now link
and it will take you to the listing service the book is on. If the same book from the same dealer is on several
sites (and on AddAll you can see that readily) click on any of the listing services links, preferably other than
ABE.
Buy it at that site, or check out the bookseller' contact details, contact him and buy it directly. You'll save
money at most dealers that way. Even if you buy from the dealer via the listing service (as long as it's not ABE),
you'll often save money. I for example, have my entire inventory listed 10% lower on Biblio than on ABE and 15%
lower on my own site than on ABE.
If ABE is the only listing service with the book, click on Buy It Now and you'll be taken to the ABE site book details page. At the bottom of the page, click
on the tab for [Bookseller & Payment Information]. On the right on the [Bookseller & Payment Information] page you'll see a link to the Bookseller's Website. Click on that and you'll be able to find the dealer's contact details.
Related links:
The BookGuide Co UK's announcement of
the new ABE policy and other relevant information.
"SOME NOTES ON SEARCHING FOR BOOKS"
A series of letters from booksellers about
the situation at ABE.
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