Internet Commerce

ABA member stores with IndieCommerce websites on the Drupal platform now have the ability to sell more than 220,000 e-books in several formats, including Adobe, Palm, and Microsoft. The new functionality allows consumers to purchase e-books and to have those books downloaded from store sites to consumers' computers and/or handheld devices.

More than 70 ABA members have now migrated their store websites to Drupal, the new ABA IndieCommerce platform, with 24 launching since early August.

On Tuesday, August 25, Sony announced that it is cooperating with the American Booksellers Association, other retailers, and a variety of traditional and digital publishers to make available a universe of reading material in EPUB format compatible with Sony Readers. Among the sites offering EPUB content for sale to consumers will be more than 200 independent bookstores participating in ABA's IndieCommerce program.

This week, ABA IndieCommerce announced a deadline extension for stores that have not yet received training on the migration of their sites to the new Drupal platform. The migration deadline for those stores is now November 1; however, booksellers who have received training before July 17 will still be required to migrate their websites to the new platform by September 1.

Booksellers in Minnesota urged to write legislators now

Earlier this month, the owners of Vertigo Books in College Park, Maryland, announced on the store blog that the indie bookstore would be closing. Many people read Vertigo's "Goodbye" post, including Washington Post columnist Marc Fisher, whose piece about the closure considered the event from the perspective of a reader, book buyer, and community resident -- and included an online readers' poll about customers and indie bookstores.

On Monday, April 27, Alzada Knickerbocker of The Avid Reader in Davis, California, and Hut Landon, the executive director of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA), are scheduled to testify at a hearing before the California State Assembly Committee o

With a crucial hearing on California's Internet Sales Tax legislation less than two weeks away, the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association (NCIBA), the Southern California Independent Booksellers Association (SCIBA), and the American Booksellers Association are strongly encouraging California booksellers to contact their state legislators to urge them to support Assembly Bi

On Monday, April 20, Sue Zumberge of Common Good Books in St. Paul, Minnesota, is scheduled to testify in support of Internet Sales Tax legislation at a Minnesota State Senate Taxes Committee hearing.

The IndieBound.org Affiliate Program is unique in that it links to not one, but hundreds of independent bookstore websites. And this week the program, which pays generous commissions to bloggers, authors, and other website owners on sales their sites refer to independent bookstores, launched the first of several planned enhancements.