IndieCommerce

Booksellers caught up in the myriad details of running both a bricks-and-mortar and virtual bookstore may give little thought to the importance of affiliate programs, but as anyone who has spent time surfing the Web knows, affiliate links are as commonplace on websites as billboards are on highways. And just as a billboard can lead a hungry driver to a restaurant or a fatigued traveler to a motel, an affiliate link on an author's website can be very effective at driving consumers to a bookseller's site.

Booksellers in the Book Sense program are reminded that the March and April Book Sense Picks fliers will contain a short consumer survey designed to solicit important feedback regarding the Picks program. As an incentive, consumers who complete the survey will be eligible to win all 20 titles featured in either the March or the April Picks fliers. One winner will be chose at random in both March and April, and each winner will be notified by Book Sense that he or she has won.

Here's a look at some exciting new functionalities recently added to BookSense.com, as well as some important customer service news. New Features: In addition to fixing a few bugs, last week BookSense.com added three new, exciting pieces of functionality:

In the classic baseball movie Field of Dreams, the mantra repeated throughout the film is, "If you build it, they will come." Not so with websites.

Holiday catalogs developed by the New Atlantic Independent, Pacific Northwest, Southeast, Southern California, and Upper Midwest booksellers associations are now featured on the BookSense.com hub site and are available for upload to participating BookSense.com sites. BookSense.com participants within each region were recently sent instructions about adding a regional holiday catalog to their site and their homepage.

Last weekend, BookSense.com brought a new production database and server online, and now, with the upgrade complete, it's time for BookSense.com participants and their customers to enjoy the increased speed and stability of bookstores' BookSense.com Web sites.

BookSense.com sites will experience significant downtime this weekend as a new production database and server are brought online. When completed, the upgrade will result in increased speed and stability for participants' Web sites. Most of the downtime is expected to occur during the first half of Sunday.

Over the weekend of November 13, BookSense.com will bring its new production database and servers online. While the result of the upgrade will mean increased speed and stability for BookSense.com participants' Web sites, BookSense.com members should be prepared for significant downtime on Saturday, November 13, and Sunday, November 14.

The success of a bookstore's Web site is directly dependent on the bookseller's efforts to market it, stressed Len Vlahos, BookSense.com director. "In some ways, a storefront retailer's Web site functions as an extension of the store, and, in other ways, as an additional location," Vlahos said.

Starting November 1, BookSense.com Co-op Reimbursement Program participants will be able to take advantage of a special offer from Algonquin Books. The publisher has created a promotion around Marlena de Blasi's A Thousand Days in Tuscany: A Bittersweet Adventure.