I am proud of the success this blog has had over the past few months. Unfortunately, as you may have noticed, recently the postings have become less prolific. In an attempt to reallocate my business duties with LRABooks to a new part-time employee (to give me a few hours a day for the blog), I have tried some revenue generating strategies (see the right side bar). Our original foray into affiliate marketing was, of course, AdSense. Since then we’ve attempted to support the best independent listings service, Biblio. I’ve avoided affiliate programs with Amazon and Alibris. After some deliberation, I have decided to add an Alibris ad to our line-up of affiliates. I have been impressed by the changes Alibris has made recently and the support they have given our blog. I will still encourage all online booksellers to make Biblio their primary account, if possible. In addition, we now are offering extremely reasonable ads to our readers and the book industry. Simply find the Advertise Here link on the right side bar for more information. Ads start at 30 cents a day for text and $1 a day for image ads.

The amount of stories popping into our inbox about ways students can save money on textbooks is phenomenal. The most recent was a Wall Street Journal article entitled “Shave Costs on Textbooks” which featured online purchasing along with other tips. In general, all of these stories mean good news for online sellers, but maybe not immediately. Within the next week most students will have purchased all of their primary books, leaving only a few stragglers. Hopefully these stories will stay fresh in parents and students heads long enough to plan for the Spring semester.

By now, most people have heard that the USPS hopes to raise rates a healthy amount sometime after the turn of the year. I do not particularity see a problem with this, especially considering the amount gas costs these days. Other shippers are dinging consumers with fuel charges, a luxury the USPS cannot flippantly apply. If you a numbers junkie or government watch-dog type, the USPS keeps most of its financial reports online. When these changes do go into effect, booksellers need to fight not only for an increase in shipping reimbursement (which should be a given), but also for listings services to maintain shipping prices for consumers. Bumping their S/H costs will hurt bookseller’s sales significantly. Given the large amount of cushion (about 34% on Alibris) these sites already have, it only makes sense to leave consumer shipping charges alone. Of course, this will hurt the bottom line of these sites, but an increase in shipping fees may decrease sales enough to make it unworth the change anyway. Then again, the best alternative, in this regard, may be to reinvest time in those sites which allow you to make these decisions yourself, like Biblio.