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Amidst the merging, closings, and reconfigurations within the online used book market, two new used book portals have launched. Tomfolio.com and Usedbookcentral.com are going toe to toe with giants like Amazon.com and B&N.com, as well as the independently owned granddaddy site Abe.com.
TOMFOLIO.COM
Tomfolio.com is a co-op site in which members can buy a share for $500. The parent site, ABookCoOp holds the shares, and the monthly fees paid by members for listing books covers the costs, with the potential to offer owners discounts when and if the site acquires surplus revenue.
Among the benefits offered by this site, other than ownership, is online credit card processing, the ability to list paper items, and the promise of no middleman making a decision to sell the site to larger companies.
Current President of the Co-Op, Jerry Parma, sells used books from San Diego, CA, and was enthusiastic about the site, as was publicity chairman Steve Erickson. "The site is growing quickly," beams Parma. "We are approaching a million books and have over 100 members."
ELandis.com developed this site for founding members Barbara E. Lightner, JoAnn Lewis, Bill Lewis, Edward Y. Hopkins, and the Co-Op's treasurer Anton Martinich. The Co-Op itself was formed in Wisconsin, a state friendly to this business model.
Tomfolio.com plans a rigorous advertising campaign in FIRSTS magazine and have themselves included in the listings for Addall. (They currently are included in the listings for bookfinder.com.)
USEDBOOKCENTRAL.COM
Not surprisingly, a good idea usually doesn't happen in a vacuum. Robert Moore, who owns an independent bookstore The Book Depot and http://www.oregonbooks.com, longed for the simplicity and efficiency of a site like his favorite, Bibliofind.com. His solution was to turn to Dick Harte to collaborate on Usedbookcentral.com.
Harte is a good friend of Bibliofind's creator, Michael Seltzer, and developed Booksite.com, a click 'n mortar commerce site for independent bookstores selling new books. Booksite.com differs from Bibliofind in that it targets sellers of new books and allows members to link and advertise their own particular sites. Bibliofind was a portal that matched buyers and sellers of books and then stepped aside.
"Amazon.com had become my biggest competitor," Moore complained. With his locale being a rural territory along the Oregon/California border, online sales meant making or breaking his company. And while Harte's Booksite.com addressed one facet of his business, new books, Bibliofind assisted the used-book portion. "There are two reasons why I pursued this idea. One was that Bibliofind, a site I used for researching and selling, was going away, and, two, Abe.com was getting into a direction I didn't like, adding additional stuff and becoming a middleman."
"I decided I had to come up with something simple and fast." While Bibliofind was purchased by Amazon.com some time ago, it was being liquidated in favor of Amazon's zShops. The costs for listing, the commissions, and the restrictions on shipping costs made the next phase of the former Bibliofind unpalatable.
Moore turned to his friend Dick Harte for help. "We became friends," he admits, "though we live 2500 miles apart and never met face to face."
Harte's response was to agree, saying it's possible that Moore may be quite ugly. "I never even saw a picture of him," he laughed. The camaraderie between the two and their agreement on the importance of business owners retaining their independence is apparent.
Harte had the programmers who developed Booksite.com modify the original program to accommodate used books. Moore was instrumental in seeing that the Bibliofind model for ease and speed was included. A couple of weeks later, Usedbookcentral.com was launched. To date there are 80 dealers and 400,000 titles listed.
Harte praised the programming team. "The technical people did marvelous things" and continue to tweak and improve. Recently Usedbookcentral was configured to accept Homebase programs, the kind many abe.com members prefer. Advertising efforts are under way, with more than 6,000 emails having been sent. An article also appeared in PUBLISHERS WEEKLY.
The motto of Usedbookcentral.com has been touted as "We're going to earn our market share, not buy it." Both men feel that the model to follow, again, is the one that formed Bibliofind's success - dealers liked the program. And for dealers to like a program, it had to be simple, work well, and work fast. What Harte has found in embracing the used book market was discovering another group like his independent new book sellers, a feisty accumulation of people who stood up to the changes the Internet brought and didn't run for cover.
When asked if the "big guns" have had any response to the emergence of two new sites, both groups replied no. Perhaps this is because the corporate radar hasn't yet picked them up. When asked what the difference was between the two newcomers, Harte thought a moment and answered. "People have to purchase a co-op interest in the other site and that means a fluctuating hierarchy. I wish them well, but there's room for more than one in this industry."
No one said that ecommerce development was easy. But thanks to Tomfolio and Usedbookcentral, book sellers now have a choice.
And who knows, one day perhaps Moore and Harte will meet in person.
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