Internet Commerce

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.

In this first On the Move of the New Year, BookSense.com presents a report on website sales during the holiday season, improvements to inventory upload features, ISBN-13 compatibility, digital content, a new content management system, and more. Holiday Sales BookSense.com announced that participants saw a double-digit increase in orders placed during the 2006 holiday selling season and that aggregate sales are up once again.

On Friday, September 8, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) held its Annual Meeting of Members at the McGraw-Hill Auditorium in New York City. At the meeting, six Board members and committee Chairs presented both highlights from the past 12 months and goals for the coming year. Among the topics discussed, the most notable was the book industry's transition to ISBN-13.

This week, BookSense.com Director Len Vlahos announced that the first phase of work to make BookSense.com websites ISBN-13 compatible has been completed. "Booksellers and consumers can now search for and find books with both 10- and 13-digit ISBNs," Vlahos said.

BookSense.com has scheduled down time on Monday, August 14, from 7:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. EST to enable staff to push new code that will make the database compliant with the 13-digit ISBN standard, which goes into effect on January 1, 2007. During the down time, store websites and administrative pages will be replaced by a "Down for Maintenance" holding page that directs users to return later in the day.

As suburban sprawl threatens to overcome more and more communities, independent booksellers are facing battles on many fronts, from fighting proposed chain store developments in their communities to competing with online giants. It is a market landscape that is very familiar to Tom Campbell of Durham, North Carolina's The Regulator Bookshop.

With BookExpo America (BEA) about three weeks away, here is a look at a few BookSense.com-related happenings scheduled for the trade show -- as well as one BookSense.com housekeeping item. BookSense.com Users Group Meeting As has become tradition at BEA, BookSense.com is holding a BookSense.com Users Group Meeting on the opening morning of the trade show. The session is scheduled for Friday, May 19, from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. in Room 150B at the Convention Center.

Last week, ABA CEO Avin Mark Domnitz sent letters to Steve Riggio, the CEO of Barnes & Noble, Inc., and Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon.com, in which he encouraged them to join the American Booksellers Association and other retailers in the fight for e-fairness.

On Wednesday, February 8, representatives from Amazon.com and eBay Inc. told the U.S. House of Representative's Small Business Subcommittee on Regulatory Reform and Oversight that collecting sales tax on online purchases is within the industry's capabilities.

BookSense.com recently announced its first group of new features for 2006, as well as other important news: