Booksellers and book buyers will undergo a whole new shopping experience when they log into eBay on Monday. That's when the Web site is expected to complete its latest round of changes to the books category.

eBay announced May 24th that it would consolidate fiction and non-fiction books into one category, prompting a flurry of angry responses from eBay booksellers.

The company made the decision, it says, based on input from buyers and sellers through direct communication and analysis of shopping behavior.

"Buyers will more easily be able to search through fiction and/or nonfiction books and narrow their results by category, format and condition," said Sravanthi Agrawal, an eBay spokesperson.

But booksellers have blasted the change through discussion boards on eBay and AuctionBytes.com because they claim it will make it harder for buyers to find books. Nonfiction and fiction books will share the same Item Specific category attributes such as medicine or history. Prior to the change, buyers could browse and search for nonfiction and fiction books separately. The books portal page and the fiction and nonfiction finder on the left side of the page already reflect the updated structure.

Booksellers also said that eBay has implemented too many changes recently to the books category, not giving sellers and buyers enough time to get used to each tweak. Angry booksellers have also called for the attention of Meg Whitman, eBay's president and chief executive, to the matter.

"I'm totally disgusted with all the changes, all of which were not necessary, but I think what angers me most is eBay trying to tell us that people are asking for these changes. It rings so false, it's hard to trust anything they say anymore," wrote one bookseller after the announcement.

Agrawal said the company has gotten little feedback since announcing the change. Although she said there has been some confusion from sellers as to why the category structure should be the same for fiction and nonfiction.

"For buyers searching for these books, the change will help them find books more easily, as many searches yield results in both fiction and nonfiction areas," she said.

Various sellers announced they were leaving eBay after this latest change and taking their books to competing sites. eBay charges sellers fees, and many of them said it wasn't worth it any longer to have their books on eBay if buyers couldn't find them. However, Agrawal said "the number of active booksellers has been growing faster in the past six months than in any time in the past year." The company does not release information on how many active booksellers it has or how much in books is sold through eBay.

She added that "significant numbers" of Half.com sellers have migrated to the eBay platform as part of the Half.com integration, which will be complete in mid-July. Half.com is an online marketplace owned by eBay that sells books, music, movies, video games, computers and software and electronics. The company is shutting down the site.

The changes to the books category will take place on Monday and Tuesday.