Like many booksellers I legitimately use the 'update product info' button to correct errors in Amazon's catalogue. This is important because it stops customers being disappointed by the wrong edition, a hardback instead of a paperback, an edition by a different publisher etc. Sometimes author's names are not as they appear on the book, or as they are known, and this needs correcting. Last night I corrected four books. For the first time ever one of my updates was refused. The stock email from Amazon was:
Thank you for using the Catalog Update Form to send suggestions
At this time we cannot accept the correction you have submitted for one of the following reasons: - Could not verify - Incorrectly formatted - Provided URL did not confirm - Some data on high-profile items is not editable
So what contentious aspect did I try to change? Well they had the author's first name as 'editor'. It is actually Allan but 'editor' is not even likely. Clearly they have gone from letting whole sale rubbish through as changes which amounted to vandalism, to banning changes which anyone with any commonsense about books must see was right. Why can't changes be reviewed by a human? If that is too expensive how about authorising those with merchant accounts to make changes as merchants can be more easily dealt with by Amazon if they misused the system.
As I have been writing this another of my updates has been refused for a book with only one edition and one publisher but Amazon list the wrong publisher. My correction is declined for the same generic reasons above.
My advice to Amazon buyers would be that if it is really important to you to have a particular edition, or format, or illustrator, or any other variable, then use the enquire facility to check with the seller before ordering. They have the book in front of them and can tell you exactly what it is.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Waverton Good Read Award
The Waverton Good Read Award is one of the more interesting book prizes in the callender. It is quite different from the big, better known prizes as it is voted for by local people who have no connection to the world of the London literarti.In their own words they:
... set out to find fifty or more debut novels - first adult novels written by British citizens and published in the previous twelve months. The aim was not only to stimulate reading in the village but also to provide encouragement to British writers. It took some persistence to identify and then gather several copies of each book, although publishers became more and more helpful as they realised what was going on. Even more remarkably, more than 50 people from in and around the village were recruited to read and review the novels.
Waverton incidentally is a village in Cheshire with a population of just 2000.
This years short list has just been announced:
A girl made of dust - Nathalie Abi-Ezi
The Outcast - Sadie Jones
Spider – Michael Morley
Child 44 – Tom Rob Smith
For those interested in other good debut novels this year the long list also included:
Adams, Poppy - The Behaviour of Moths
Bird, Geoffrey - One Man's Empire
Campbell, Duncan - The Paradise Trail
Campbell, Ellie - How to Survive Your Sisters
Day, Sallie - The Palace of Strange Girls
Douglas, Louise - The Love of My Life
Fiorato, Marina - The Glassblower of Murano
Hawkins, Alis - Testament
Hinchcliffe, Sally - Out of a Clear Sky
Kehoe, Denis - Nights Beneath the Nation
Sidebottom, Harry - Warrior of Rome 1: Fire in the East
Somerville, Rowan - The End of Sleep
Starling, Belinda - The Journal of Dora Damage
Topolski, Carol - Monster Love
Upson, Nicola - An Expert in Murder
Whitehouse, Lucie - The House at Midnight
I have read just two of the above, Testament by Alis Hawkins and An Expert in Murder by Nicola Upson, and thoroughly enjoyed them both.
Monday, March 9, 2009
Congratulations
Congratulations to Ibooknet member Vanessa Robertson of Robertson Books who juggles selling collectible children's books with running the independent publisher Fidra Books and The Children's Bookshop in Edinburgh. The Children's Bookshop has been reached the Scottish shortlist for Independent Bookshop of the Year Award .
Vanessa notes on her blog, "It’s wonderful news and has really invigorated us at a time of year when trade is always slow."
For any small business trading in difficult times such a pat on the back must be very welcome, and in Vanessa's case very well deserved. We wish The Children's Bookshop well as they move onto the the next stage of the award.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
What's in your literary hall of shame?
Just listening on Radio 4's PM to the top ten list of books people claim they have read which they actually haven't. My main claim to fame in the not reading stakes is doing Homer's Iliad and Odyssey as one of my special subjects for my degree and never actually reading The Iliad in its entirety. Still haven't. And they were read in translation, I should say, lest anyone think I have a brain brimming with linguistic zip and ping.
This is the list, in order of most lied about:
- 1984- George Orwell
- War and Peace - Tolstoy
- Ulysses - James Joyce
- The Bible
- Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
- A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking
- Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
- In Remembrance of Things Past - Marcel Proust
- Dreams from My Father - Barack Obama
- The Selfish Gene - Richard Dawkins
I really, genuinely, absolutely have, read three of them, though perhaps not every word.
So, what are your literary no-go areas?
And in case anyone is wondering, I did get my degree (Ancient History and Classical Civilisation), and quite respectably too. I maintained then, and would probably still now if pushed, that if you were doing Homeric Society as revealed (or not) in the epics, then you could skip the bits in which they were fighting. Sadly, when it comes to Homeric descriptions of war and Bernard Cornwell's, I do prefer Bernard Cornwell's.
Friday, February 27, 2009
In America, books are bad for you
I blogged a while back on the unsuspected hazards that might lurk in books, and the seemingly draconian regulations posted in library books in days of yore to deal with them.
Alas, it seems that the poor souls who drafted those regulations missed a trick: they did not consider the possibility that children's books might be actively dangerous in themselves, not just because of the dreadful germs they might have encountered. In America, any children's book published before 1985 is now considered an active menace to children, and may not be sold. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) is now in force, and has imposed very tight limits on the amount of lead any article bought for a child may contain. Books produced before 1985 may have had lead used in their printing inks, and hence the prohibition. Note the may there - some have lead, some haven't, so the law has helpfully produced a way round to stop you throwing away books you can actually sell. You pay for the book to be lead tested - and this is apparently not cheap.
There is an exemption for books which might be thought of as collectible, and so read by adults and not children, but all over America thrift stores and libraries are tarping off pre-1985 books, or throwing out the illicit child poisoners. If they don't, they risk a $100,000 dollar fine and maybe even imprisonment.
It seems absolutely mad, doesn't it? The nanny state gone completely stark, raving bonkers. The CPSIA was apparently sparked by the Chinese toy scandals: which I can entirely see - no one wants illegal lead in toys, but books? Surely you're more at risk from a vicious paper cut from a book than lead poisoning.
And if it's illegal to expose a child to lead in a pre-1985 book, I do wonder what this means for books people actually have in their houses now. Perhaps the children of bookdealers who work from home will be whisked off to safety until their homes can be de-contaminated.
So, here I sit, in what American legislators would probably consider a toxic fug, surrounded by piles of lethal literature. No wonder the dog's just insisted on going outside. Read more about the law here, here, and here.
Alas, it seems that the poor souls who drafted those regulations missed a trick: they did not consider the possibility that children's books might be actively dangerous in themselves, not just because of the dreadful germs they might have encountered. In America, any children's book published before 1985 is now considered an active menace to children, and may not be sold. The Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA) is now in force, and has imposed very tight limits on the amount of lead any article bought for a child may contain. Books produced before 1985 may have had lead used in their printing inks, and hence the prohibition. Note the may there - some have lead, some haven't, so the law has helpfully produced a way round to stop you throwing away books you can actually sell. You pay for the book to be lead tested - and this is apparently not cheap.
There is an exemption for books which might be thought of as collectible, and so read by adults and not children, but all over America thrift stores and libraries are tarping off pre-1985 books, or throwing out the illicit child poisoners. If they don't, they risk a $100,000 dollar fine and maybe even imprisonment.
It seems absolutely mad, doesn't it? The nanny state gone completely stark, raving bonkers. The CPSIA was apparently sparked by the Chinese toy scandals: which I can entirely see - no one wants illegal lead in toys, but books? Surely you're more at risk from a vicious paper cut from a book than lead poisoning.
And if it's illegal to expose a child to lead in a pre-1985 book, I do wonder what this means for books people actually have in their houses now. Perhaps the children of bookdealers who work from home will be whisked off to safety until their homes can be de-contaminated.
So, here I sit, in what American legislators would probably consider a toxic fug, surrounded by piles of lethal literature. No wonder the dog's just insisted on going outside. Read more about the law here, here, and here.
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