Now live, eBay Express, is a new attempt at eBay to take a bigger slice of the instant purchase online market. According to the site, “With eBay Express it’s faster and easier than ever to breeze through all your shopping. Find the best deals on everything from designer jeans to a complete home theater system.” Will a successful eBay Express finally deal a death blow to Half.com? Perhaps, but it doesn’t seem to be coming anytime soon. If it did, it would be a major blow to booksellers favoring the eBay network of sites. A quick review of the “Books” section of Express, reveals a pretty uninspired layout.

Articles about Express:
It’s Express Time (Ecommerce-guide)
Whitman’s eBay Launches ‘Express’ Service (Forbes)
A Shopper’s First Impressions of eBay Express (AuctionBytes)

Today, Shelf Awareness printed the following statement: “For our money, based on conversations with students and comments by student debaters on the subject at CAMEX in Houston, economics are key [to the success of e-texts]. If e-texts are significantly cheaper than traditional textbooks, students will load up on them.”

As we’ve posted here many times, there is not much evidence (if any) to back that up (most recently: E-books flop at Ivy institution). The merely anecdotal remarks from SA doesn’t really hold much weight.

I, personally, have been encouraging sellers to stick it out with Alibris at least through the Half.com integration scheduled for the first quarter of 2006. Now I feel like a fool. In April’s (isn’t it almost May?) seller news the company began managing expectations on this one… Something the must be a prerequisite for all marketing staff working there… The end result is that, for sellers focusing on mainly newer titles, the site is becoming increasingly not viable.

“In December, we told you we’d launch a Half.com program in 2006. Alibris remains committed to this goal. However, we‚’ve discovered unanticipated work during our technical assessment of this project. While we still believe a Half.com program is viable, it may be preceded by an eBay program which presents a more stable technical integration and greater benefit for sellers. We‚’ll provide updates on these initiatives as we near a launch date.”