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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A Japanese paper reports on reservation-only bookstores. Browsers pay by the hour, but that’s not the only innovation:

“Most of the 2,500 books at the store are used copies. Each is contained in a paper bag so they cannot be read without opening the bags. Should a potential customer decide not to purchase a book in a bag he or she opened, the customers must leave a brief message about the book for the next person.”

(via Shelf:Life)

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Today’s amusing (if less than titillating) literary gossip comes from the Sunday Telegraph, where one bookseller tells of a curmudgeonly encounter with …someone. Then we get the dirt on Graham Greene’s poor spelling.

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A quick follow up to the last entry: You’ll remember that HarperCollins airbrushed a cigarette out of illustrator Clement Hurd’s author photo on Goodnight Moon. Collectors will want to snap up their variant dust jackets before the current printing sells out, today’s Shelf Awareness newsletter shares this from a HarperCollins email: “…we recognize the concern over adjusting historical photographs, and have therefore decided to print an alternate picture of Clement Hurd in future reprints that does not feature a cigarette.”

Using Books was given an advance look at the replacement photo and we’re a little surprised by the choice. Have a look.

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It seems that HarperCollins doctored the photograph of illustrator Clement Hurd on a recent printing of Goodnight Moon. They removed a barely visible cigarette from his hand. One children’s bookstore launched the site Goodnight Reality to campaign to have the original photograph reinstated.

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The New York Times and the Associated Press both got a preview of the Book Industry Study Group’s new report on the used book market. Used book sales rose eleven percent to 2.2 billion dollars in 2004. Three-quarters of that business was in textbooks, though non-textbooks sales have increased more than textbook sales.

The New York Times article touches on concerns about surging online sales’ affect on the health of bricks-and-mortar shops. I’d be curious if there are any statistics about what portion of online sales are made by booksellers with physical shops. The used and new markets and the online and offline markets are all more integrated than we think.

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Guardian critic Tim Adams, goes in search of Scott Pack, who — as head buyer for UK bookselling giant Waterstone’s — seems to be spoken of in hushed tones:

I was talking to a few publishers in London about an idea I’d had for a book, partly, pointedly, about mid-life underachievement. Mostly, they liked the idea, but a single name seemed to dog my progress. ‘You have to understand,’ they said, ‘that whatever we think of it, we have to sell it to Scott Pack.’ Or: ‘I think Scott Pack is quite down on this kind of thing at the moment.’ When I asked around I discovered it wasn’t just me. Scott Pack was, it seemed, down on a few of my friends’ ideas, too.

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The New York Times has a short interview with S. E. Hinton, author of The Outsiders. The occasion is the release of a new cut of Francis Ford Coppola’s film adaptation of the book.

Hinton has recently returned to writing and her new work seems a departure from her teen novels:

Last year . . . Ms. Hinton published her first adult novel, “Hawkes Harbor,” about an orphan raised by nuns who encounters pirates, gun runners and sharks while at sea, and is protected by a vampire.

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In a column published yesterday, The Stranger’s books editor, Christopher Frizzelle, notes that Bailey/Coy Books, one of my neighborhood bookstores, is moving into used books. He quotes Bailey/Coy’s owner, Michael Wells: “The Powell’s model, mixing used and new [books], will be what the independent bookstore of the future is. I’m sure of that.”

Just today, the Shelf Awareness newsletter reported that University Book Store (the independent bookstore that serves the University of Washington) is expanding into used books, and they’re getting help from Powell’s. In September, Powell’s will be sending buyers north to Seattle to set up a temporary operation inside University Book Store, where they’ll buy books for Powell’s and train U Book Store staff. The U Book Store begins buying used books on an ongoing basis later in the month.

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In this article, The New York Times mines two studies that conclude the used book market strengthens new book sales:

When used books are substituted for new ones, the seller faces competition from the secondhand market, reducing the price it can set for new books. But there’s another effect: the presence of a market for used books makes consumers more willing to buy new books, because they can easily dispose of them later.

(via The Millions)

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There are two big book sales in the Puget Sound area this weekend.

First up, the Tacoma Public Library’s Monster Book Sale. They’re filling a high school cafeteria with 40,000 items, most priced between 50 cents and $1. It runs from 9-5 on Saturday, July 16 and Sunday, July 17. Entry to the Friday evening preview sale costs $25. The details are on the library’s news page.

In Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood, Half Price Books is having a tent sale, Saturday and Sunday 9-6. Everything is $1 or less. I’m not sure what sort of books they’re selling here — old store inventory, fresh inventory, remainders, or a mix. The address and other details are at the Half Price Books news page.

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Yesterday’s New York Times has an article on Amazon.com’s tenth anniversary. Sometime in the last ten years the press started covering Amazon as a business instead of as a novelty.

Last Sunday happened to be the fifth anniversary of my last day at Amazon, by the way.

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The AP is reporting on a May 31 court ruling that will require Borders’ online division to pay California state sales tax for internet sales that it made in 1998 and 1999.

Borders argued that it owed no tax because, though the parent company has more than 100 stores in California, its online division has no presence in there. But:

California’s 1st District Court of Appeal in San Francisco rejected that argument, ruling on May 31 that the Borders’ Web site and retail stores have been too intertwined to call themselves separate companies. The three-judge panel cited in-store advertising for the Web site, receipts that said “Visit us online at www.borders.com” and the ability of customers to return online merchandise at retail stores.

The article speculates on the implications for other retailers:

The decision could lead to similar rulings by the State Board of Equalization against New York-based Barnes and Noble Inc. and maybe even Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc., which handles online sales for Borders and other bricks-and-mortar affiliates, paying them a cut of the profits, said Lenny Goldberg, executive director of the California Tax Reform Association.

Barnes and Noble’s online business certainly seems at risk of receiving a big tax bill from California. Amazon seems exposed. Its Alexa and A9 divisions are both based in California.

If the same argument can be made in other states’ courts, Borders, Barnes and Noble, and other chain retailers with online sales divisions may end up owing back taxes elsewhere. Amazon only has a presence in a handful of states, so they’re likely safe unless a court rules that Amazon’s thousands of Marketplace and Zshops sellers (or Borders for that matter — their website has been managed by Amazon since 2001) can be called its “agents”.

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Erik Benson has passed ongoing maintenance of his book tracking/networking site All Consuming along to his company, The Robot Co-op (makers of 43 Things, a personal motivation networking site). This is great news for All Consuming, which has never really had the resources or support to reach its potential.

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TomFolio.com launched a polished new site design today. It looks great.

The front page is a litte richer in rolling content than the previous site. The right sidebar is now dedicated to featured items. The Authors Born on This Day list is supplemented by a list of the day’s celebrations, observances, and historical events with links to loosely related categories.

A more subtle, but still important, change is the new emphasis on the fact that the site is a member-owned co-op. (Using Books is currently a non-owning member.) It says prominently, at the top of the screen, “Shop Co-Op!” and “An International Co-op of Independent Dealers”. This is a stronger and more specific identity for TomFolio than the one encouraged by the old tagline, “Your Corner Bookstore on the Internet”.

Kudos to Laurie and the TomFolio members who made the redesign happen.

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A 48 hour relay reading of Don Quixote was held in Madrid over the weekend. It’s the 400th anniversary of the publication of Don Quixote. (link via Bookninja)

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BBC News reports that a mob of angry protestors in the Indian state of Manipur set fire to a library in a nationalistic fury of alphabet envy:

Officials of a prestigious library in India’s north-eastern state of Manipur say nearly 145,000 books have been destroyed in an arson attack….

Officials say many of Manipur’s most ancient texts were among the books destroyed by the fire.

The arsonists want the Mayek script to replace Bengali script in the state.

(via BF Insider List)

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All Consuming, a site that aggregates together weblog references to books and on-site reading journal entries, has been taken offline for some indefinite period of time. Availability of the site has been pretty spotty for a couple of years. But on the current “Out of Service” page, Erik Benson says that he plans on re-working the site after he gets back from vacation.

On another note, Alibris, one of The Big Three used book sites has been offline for much of the afternoon. [Update: Alibris is back up.]

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