IndieCommerce

From 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday, April 29, until midnight on Tuesday, May 13, BookSense.com participating stores are offering customers free downloads of Betrayal, Book One of the Del Rey series Star Wars: Legacy of the Force.

After managing the Fountain Bookstore in Richmond, Virginia, for eight years, Kelly Justice is now its new owner. The plan that had been "batted around" for the past year and a half was finalized with former owners Louise "Boo" Smythe and Jim Smythe in the first week of January.

It's Thanksgiving weekend, and that means one thing to retailers: the holiday selling season is finally here. While sleigh bells are ringing and cash registers jingling, booksellers can expect traffic to their BookSense.com websites and online sales to peak each Monday between Thanksgiving and Christmas. (What "Black Friday" is to storefront retailers, the Monday after Thanksgiving -- "Cyber Monday" -- has become to online retailers.)

Gregory Maguire Candlewick Press and BookSense.com are partnering to host an online chat with bestselling author Gregory Maguire on Monday, November 19, at 11:00 a.m. EST.

BookSense.com was recently added as an online book purchasing option on both the National Public Radio and The New York Times websites. Now, when NPR or NYTimes.com readers are interested in a featured book or bestseller, they are offered an option to buy from local, independent bookstores, as well as from Amazon.com.

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BookSense.com is scheduled to be down for about an hour very early Sunday morning to allow staff to upgrade software. From 2:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. Eastern Time on September 23, connectivity to BookSense.com, templated sites, e-mail, and all other services will be sporadic. Questions about Sunday's work should be addressed to staff@booksense.com or (800) 637-0037, option 2.

At the meeting of the BookSense.com Users Group on Friday, June 1, at BookExpo America, BookSense.com Director Len Vlahos and other members of the BookSense.com team discussed some of the e-commerce site's newest features, as well as several planned enhancements. The "Next Big Thing," said Vlahos, is the site's eventual migration to Plone, an open source software that will allow for a much more nimble and dynamic BookSense.com.