IndieCommerce

This week, the final state-specific fact sheets were added to the E-Fairness Action Kit (E-FACT) on BookWeb.org.  E-FACT provides booksellers with a wide array of tools for their e-fairness outreach efforts.

This week, 10 more state-specific fact sheets were added to the E-Fairness Action Kit (E-FACT) on BookWeb.org, the American Bookseller Association's member website. Next week, the ABA will add the final fact sheets for the remaining states that collect sales tax but do not yet have e-fairness laws. ABA launched E-FACT in January to provide booksellers with a wide array of state-specific tools to help them in their e-fairness outreach efforts. New fact sheets are now available for:

A number of ABA IndieCommerce stores have reported receiving fraudulent orders for The Twilight Series Boxed Set. A red flag is that the bill-to/ship-to addresses are different. The order usually comes from a Yahoo e-mail account and includes a request for overnight or two-day delivery, sometimes claiming it's for a birthday present.

Three improvements to ABA IndieCommerce websites were announced this week, including one that has resulted in lower rates on credit card transactions. 1) A new credit card processor IndieCommerce has switched its credit card processor to Bank of America, resulting in lower rates on each transaction:   Old Processor Bank of America

On the cusp of the April 1 switch to an agency model for e-books, negotiations were ongoing between five major publishers and wholesalers, including Ingram, and others in the supply chain. In a communication to IndieCommerce participants, ABA COO Len Vlahos explained that a short-term consequence of the switch would be the delisting of e-books from Hachette, HarperCollins (including Zondervan), Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster on IndieCommerce websites.

In the past year, more than 100 ABA IndieCommerce sites have successfully migrated to the system's new Drupal platform, and now the migration of store sites from the old system to the new is in its final stages. Over the course of next month, IndieCommerce staff will be moving stores still on the legacy system to the new platform, where they'll have the benefits of a very flexible, stable, and search-engine friendly website. The new system also allows ABA to begin offering many exciting features that booksellers have been requesting for several years.

Consumers visiting a bookstore's ABA IndieCommerce website on the Drupal platform can now "look inside" thousands of books, courtesy of Google Preview. If Google Preview is available for a title, a button appears below the book's cover art on the site's product page. Clicking the button brings up an embedded viewer that provides a detailed look inside the book. Google Preview is also available on IndieBound.org.

This week, the American Booksellers Association presented IndieCommerce members with a roadmap of upgrades and new features planned for the first half of 2010. ABA also assured members that, in the wake of the staff reorganization announced last week, IndieCommerce remains an extremely high priority and that the recent changes would put staff in a stronger position to respond to customer service questions and to implement new features.

Eighteen ABA member stores have migrated from the old BookSense.com legacy system to IndieCommerce's Drupal-based platform in the last month, bringing the total number of stores on the new system to more than 120.

ABA IndieCommerce this week launched a new feature that allows stores to create new orders on their customers' behalf and charge their credit cards automatically using a secure, encrypted feature called a Customer Information Manager (CIM) Profile. A CIM Profile is an encrypted data snapshot of a customer's credit card info. How might you use this feature?