Internet Commerce

Over the past year-and-a-half, BookSense.com's e-newsletter has established itself as a fun, promotional vehicle strengthening the bond between consumers and independent bookstores. "We get a lot of feedback from consumers," Linda Castellitto, BookSense.com's creative director, told Bookselling This Week. "And the newsletter will often prompt them to go look for books on their local independent bookstore's site, too. It's helped increase awareness [of independent bookstores]."

For almost two years, the BookSense.com Affiliate Program has been successful on the national level, with currently close to 500 affiliations made up of a mix of authors, political organizations, and businesses. Now, the number of independent bookstores that are initiating their own affiliate programs through their BookSense.com Web sites is rapidly growing. A major reason for the burgeoning numbers is simple, according to Meg Smith, BookSense.com business development and marketing manager. "It's a great marketing tool," she summed up.

Dan Combs, director of digital government for the State of Iowa, has told Bookselling This Week that Iowa’s Information Technology Department (ITD) is in the process of moving the direct link to Amazon.com from the homepage of its official state Web site, www.iowa.gov. This feature will be replaced by a link directing consumers to a new page that will include links to both Amazon.com and BookSense.com, the e-commerce component of the Book Sense national marketing campaign.

On June 20, the owners and managers of nine American Booksellers Association member stores in Iowa mailed a letter to Governor Tom Vilsack and Iowa’s Information Technology Department (ITD) expressing their concern over an exclusive Amazon.com link on the official state Web site, www.iowa.gov.

On April 19, in the case of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression (ABFFE) v. Dean, U.S. District Judge J. Gavan Murtha enjoined a Vermont statute criminalizing any material posted on Web sites considered to be "harmful to minors." The complaint challenging the law was first filed on February 7, 2001, by a diverse array of individuals, businesses, and civil rights groups. The plaintiffs had claimed that the law violated constitutionally protected free speech rights and the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

Eric Frazier Because BTW became an exclusively online publication in January, I can safely assume that if you are reading this column, you have Internet access -- or at least, you have a friend or associate with computer access.

A long-simmering dispute between the Authors Guild and Amazon.com returned to the news when the organization e-mailed over 5,000 members encouraging them to remove links from the authors’ Web sites to Amazon.com. The Authors Guild acted after Amazon.com stepped up its marketing efforts for its "Amazon Marketplace" program, where consumers can sell used books, CDs, and other items. The guild has over 8,000 members, and more than 700 of them have Web sites.

BookSense.com has begun a marketing program designed to encourage booksellers who may not have evaluated the program since its commercial launch in November 2000 to look again. Len Vlahos, BookSense.com director, told BTW that since BookSense.com first went online in the summer of 2000 in a live beta test "the product has experienced so much growth and development -- we really want stores to take another look."