BookFinder.com, the web’s premier book search aggregater site, has integrated shipping charges into the site’s search results. Anirvan Chatterjee announced the change in BookFinder’s weblog last week:

…This gives users the option of comparing postpaid prices for the books they want, rather than comparing only the base prices, without regard to potential shipping costs. We believe most users would rather buy a near-fine $20 book with a $3 shipping charge than a good-condition $15 book with a $10 shipping charge.

In reviewing a number of searches, I noticed that the shipping rates for many of BookFinder’s client sites (Biblio.com, Choosebooks, and TomFolio) are only listed as estimates. Each of these sites allows their listing booksellers to setup their own shipping charges, which may be higher or lower than the sites’ default rates. In the searches that I sampled, the only site with varying shipping rates that does show the final shipping rate is Abebooks, BookFinder’s parent company. This means that some results from other sites are listed with slightly inaccurate prices. The price discrepency often gives those listings different placement in the search results than they’re warranted, sometimes better and sometimes worse. Though usually the final price isn’t off by much more than 50 cents or a dollar either way, this will likely cause some to scream “bias” since Abebooks is BookFinder’s parent company. Anirvan tells me in an email:

We include precise shipping charges whenever our partners are
able to provide them. We do this with virtually all new booksellers on
our system, and most of the larger multi-dealer listings sites,
including Alibris, the Amazon Marketplace sites, Half.com, and
Abebooks. We’re also working with Biblio.com and TomFolio to integrate
their dealer shipping matrices into our site. We run an open platform,
and would love to include good data from as many sources as possible.

(Amazon.com, Alibris, and other sites whose listings currently appear in BookFinder’s results with non-estimate shipping charges have shipping rate structures that don’t vary between sellers, which presumably makes them easier to implement.)

Shipping rates can be a divisive and confusing issue and it’s really good to see BookFinder taking steps to make them more transparent.

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The Bookselling Online Blog is collecting responses to Abebooks’ BookFinder acquisition from some of BookFinder’s other clients — Abebooks’ competitors Biblio and Alibris — and now from AddAll, one of BookFinder’s direct competitors. They also secured reassurances from Abebooks that they won’t be taking advantage of their new conflict of interest.

The acquisition is a good move for BookFinder and good news from its users. New resources (money, servers, and people) gives them the chance to expand and fine tune their service. Perhaps they’ll work out a way to integrate information like dealer reputation and shipping charges into their search results.

I haven’t seen any speculation about this elsewhere, but I’m guessing one of the things that made BookFinder an attractive buy is the BookFinder team’s expertise in analyzing search trends.

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