BookSense.com On the Move…

This month's feature from BookSense.com Director Len Vlahos updates booksellers on the latest improvements and enhancements to BookSense.com.

Greetings! There's a lot of new BookSense.com news in this month's edition of "On the Move.…"

New relationship with Levenger

You may have noticed that there is now an icon for Levenger at the top of the left-hand navigation bar of your consumer BookSense.com [1] Web site. This icon links to the Levenger Web site where your customers can purchase bookcases, dictionary stands, and other very nice, high quality merchandise aimed at readers.

In case you missed the announcement [2] a couple of weeks ago, Book Sense and Levenger have entered into a marketing relationship. The first piece of that relationship is an affiliate arrangement between BookSense.com Web sites and Levenger.

Each time a customer clicks on the link on a BookSense.com site, the customer is sent to the Levenger site. If the customer then makes a purchase, that BookSense.com member bookstore will receive a commission. Levenger will handle the sales and pay ABA a lump sum. We will verify the accounting, and then pay each store that earned a commission in that quarter via ACH Transfer. The total affiliate commission is six percent. Stores will get four percent, and ABA will keep two percent to help cover administrative costs.

The BookSense.com User's Council and the ABA Board were very excited about this relationship, and we are too. This is a great way to raise our profile and increase revenue for participating stores, without adding anything to your already overloaded to-do list. For the launch of the program, I recommend that you put a special note in your site's greeting or in your e-mail newsletter letting customers know that the relationship exists.

Other new features on BookSense.com

In order to prepare for the rollout of our new BookSense.com Co-op Reimbursement Program [3], we've upgraded the system to include multiple "Themes."

As you probably know, a Theme is prepackaged national content available through your admin page. You can post this content on your Web site, changing it with the click of the mouse. It keeps your site fresh with a minimum of work. Now, instead of using just one theme, you can use up to three. You'll need to change your "Home Page Layout" in your admin, and choose new themes under "Edit National Content."

In other new development news, we've also updated the privacy statement (to address concerns related to the USA Patriot Act); fixed bugs in the Order Transaction and Store Fulfilled Order reports; fixed a bug on the final checkout page that was (very) occasionally canceling an order in process; and are in the midst of adding a whole lot of Book Sense 76 reviews to the product pages. And there's more coming soon!

ACH transfer reminder

Just a reminder, you can now pay your monthly fee through ACH Transfer rather than through a credit card. This is much faster and much more efficient. Plus, you don't run the risk of incurring interest charges from your bank. We would like everyone to switch to this method of payment over the next few months, but we need your permission to do it. Please send a note to ed@bookweb.org [4] to make the switch.

New way of handling Live Help

Up until now, to communicate with us via instant message, you clicked the Live Help link on the top of your admin page. That link is now gone. To communicate with us via instant message, you can send a message to BookSense1 or BookSense2 on AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Instant Messenger, or MSN Instant Messenger. If you're not sure how to set this up, contact BookSense.com customer service at (800) 637-0037, ext. 1234 or e-mail staff@booksense.com [5].

Questions about managing e-mail lists

One of our top priorities for new development is finding a more robust way of handling e-mail list management. Specifically, we're looking to provide you with tools that will allow you to add/delete/edit e-mail addresses individually and en masse, and send targeted e-mails to specific customers. One way to accomplish this is to outsource the work. This would mean an additional -- and optional -- monthly fee of up to $25. We only want to do this if enough stores are interested, so, if you are interested, please let me know.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me at len@booksense.com [6] or call BookSense.com customer service at (800) 637-0037, ext. 1234, or send an e-mail to staff@booksense.com [5].

I look forward to next month's "BookSense.com On the Move...."

Thanks!

Len
len@booksense.com [6]