The books that don't exist on Amazon

Many, many bookdealers list on Amazon, and most of Ibooknet are among them. Amazon started off life selling new books, and its transition to selling used and rare books as well has not been without problems.

To give Amazon its due, it has tried to wrestle with the complications caused by a rigid system which only allowed the upload of books with an ISBN (thereby condeming hundreds of thousands of books to the netherworld that was Z-shops). Z-shops are now history, and the bookdealer can now upload any book by creating his own listing.

On other bookselling sites, what you upload is what you upload: so if you upload Agatha Christie's Nemesis as Nemesiss, Nemesiss is what will appear on the site. Amazon is different. It overwrites whatever title you upload a book with the title it has on its database (the matching is done via isbn or similar). It is this database that booksellers can add to or alter.

You might think that that solves all problems: and maybe it might if humanity were perfect. However, a random trawl around a popular title on Amazon (you might want to try Jill's Gymkhana by Ruby Ferguson) will show that humanity has problems when it comes to adding book data to Amazon: look at the tricky question of who actually wrote the book - was it Ruby Ferguson or Caney (the illustrator)? Added to this is Amazon's insistence that you must enter the correct date on which a book was published, and with a popular book that was reprinted several times you will have entry after entry for what is really the same book. You really don't want to try looking for a copy of The Silver Brumby's Daughter, by Elyne Mitchell.

Some people don't like this. They don't like it at all: so much so that they have decided to create listings highlighting the pointless duplication. If that was all they'd done, the problem would not be so serious. What they've also done is edit listings others have already created. Do a search on Amazon on duplication and you will see what I mean.

Many of these listings have been created quite legitimately and were correct: it is not necessarily the fault of the bookseller that other, virtually identical, listings have been created. If you've created a listing for the Beano Book 1977 and someone has changed the title for you to Duplicate Listing 1977, it isn't going to show up on a search for Beano. You won't sell the book, and until someone tells you what's happened to your listing, you're going to remain in happy ignorance.

You would think that Amazon would be worried about this: the descriptions are obviously completely inaccurate; some are defamatory; and there seems an obvious problem with a system that is supposed to be policed. To make an alteration to a listing you submit it to Amazon and a couple of days later you are told whether or not your changes are acceptable. The fact that all these changes have been passed ought to be telling someone, somewhere in Amazon that all is not well.

And they don't do a great deal for those booksellers who have been affected either. Amazon's response to far to complaints has been to ask which listings are affected. If you are a bookseller with 20,000 listings, this means checking each one individually on Amazon to see what has been affected, and of course as the guerrilla hasn't been stopped in their tracks, there's absolutely no guarantee that they, or anyone else who takes it into their heads, can't immediately alter back something you've changed. Checking every single listing every single day doesn't seem the best use of a bookseller's time, and it is of course throwing all responsibility off Amazon's shoulders straight back on to the bookseller.

The person or people making the changes should be easy enough to trace and remove from Amazon, but the main problem that Amazon need to address is policing additions and alterations to book listings. These have to be submitted to Amazon, and they should be checked by people who have been carefully briefed about what to be wary about: Duplication by No Author you might have thought would have rung a bell, but no.

So far Amazon's actions have been less than helpful. Watch this space: Ibooknet are not giving up and going away.

Amazon eats the bookselling world

Nearly all of us here at Ibooknet also list our books on Abe (Advanced Book Exchange). This is one of the largest bookselling sites, and is regarded by most of us as a necessary evil. It is hard to maintain your independence as a bookseller these days: whether we like it or not, most of us rely on Amazon, Abe or both for some of our income.

Some of us have our own websites: many of which are run by a firm called Chrislands. Abe recently bought Chrislands. And now Abe have been bought by Amazon. So, as well as Amazon trying to corner the POD (print on demand) market, they will now have a very large slice indeed of the secondhand book market.

Is this a good thing? It depends, I suppose. At best, Amazon will leave Abe alone. Abe, I presume, have a big enough income stream to make them of interest to Amazon. I tend to sell my better books via Abe, not Amazon, so I wonder if the market for the more esoteric book, described in more detail than Amazon currently allows, is the market Amazon is aiming for. If it is, in some ways this is not such a bad thing. If Amazon removes from Abe the megalisters, who list hundreds of thousands of titles they do not actually have but print on demand, and remove the megasellers who use a generic description for every single book they sell: "Good Book!" for example, which when used for every single book you possess displays a remarkable lack of critical acuity if nothing else; and leave the sellers who describe books they actually own, then Abe would return to its beginnings as a good site for the bookseller and buyer.

Abe's email to its booksellers told us:

We expect this change to allow AbeBooks to expand its offerings and introduce new features and services to enhance the book buying and selling experience.

which frankly could mean anything. If Abe is going to sell new books in the same way that Amazon does will that increase Amazon/Abe's market share of the new book market overall? Or just confuse the market?

Here at Ibooknet we have plenty of opinions:

James, of The Glass Key, said:

"Always look on the bright side....

Being a Monty Python fan I might think two depressing factors in a bookseller's life had now become one so the hydra has one less head. I think the world looks clearer."

Graeme, of Magpie Books said:

"I just keep back to thinking about bibliofind who amazon bought years and
years ago:

type http://www.bibliofind.com/ into a browser
and you'll see what I mean. "

Chris, of Diaskari Books said:

"Bezos is smart. Can't see that he would simply want to collapse Abe into Amazon - they are slightly different buyer markets with different buying practices and that is presumably what it wants to acquire - some form of synergy not just putting a competitor out of business only.

Maybe work to bring the Abe and the Marketplace buyer and seller community together. [Marketplace is Amazon's mechanism for allowing private individuals and booksellers to sell via its site.] Perhaps even bring some discipline into marketplace which is riddled with bibliographic nonsense - all of Amazon's making.

Don't know - proof of pudding etc but I wouldn't necessarily assume it's going to be all bad for us short term (although end result inevitably will be about reduction of choice in selling venues but possibly also more power to the alternative sites). "

So, we wait to see. In the meantime, we're working on making the Ibooknet site better, and are always open to suggestions for what you think we can do better.