Amazon is changing the effective date of their new Shipping Credits and Variable fees. The new day these changes will take effect is May 10th, 2007 after UPSP closes Pacific Standard Time.
Previously these changes were to take effect on May 14th, 2007 however a recent announcement on the Amazon Seller Community site cites seller feedback for moving up the day.
Click here to read the Amazon Seller Community Day Change Post
I have been following the big boxes’ online overtures for some time now. As reported back in November, Borders is mapping out plans to end its Amazon partnership and sell on its own site. New readers to the blog and non-bookish types, may think they are reading an old post at this point — but this is correct — Borders is light years behind EVERYONE in this regard.
Shareholders, book lovers, online sellers alike should finally be prepared to hear what Borders intends to do. Either before or on their investor conference call on 22 March, you will see a major press release/announcement outlining their plans for an online site. I remain unsure of the exact details, but it will involve its own site at Borders.com. Investors should be relieved, if still disappointed, that this important change is coming. If Borders slices off even a small percentage of online book sales it will be significant for the stock.
Now, let’s help Borders take it to the next level- If they really want to see significant growth in this venture and bring some respite to its shareholders, then they should also have cogent plans to open a third party marketplace on its site. The marketplace should start with no sellers fees for 1 year and take 15-20% of all sales. This move alone would bring a flood of independent sellers to the site. What good is that? Well a thriving, highly competitive marketplace will allow Borders to offer used books at low prices and succeed in a manner similar to Amazon and Half. Obviously this will not cannibalize its own book sales online (none), but rather, foster an immense amount of traffic and buzz.
If Borders moves too slow on this, and the stock price falls below $20, you may see someone take this company private and swiftly move online. An efficient process could help increase the value of this company significantly.
Many booksellers thought that the Biblio train had all but puttered out in 2006. This year, however, there seems to be a growing number of booksellers on various discussion boards and in emails to myself cheering the increasing number of sales at the site.
I’ve always been a strong proponent of the site. I have written numerous times (most recently here) on the myriad aspects to its service that make it the most seller-friendly site on the net.
I took a gander at the site recently a did some consumer lens testing. For me, the most obvious issue is a somewhat clunky layout. The main landing page does a great job focusing your attention on the search box, but everything else on that page is more or less difficult to discern. The pervasive use of bullets on the page does nothing to help clarify the layout and really just look tacky. There is not a lot of symmetry among the 3 columns and the different boxes located within in each.
I really like the search results page and the myriad ways to sort and refine searches on the page. I would like to see the search engine get a little smarter, especially with names. For example, I searched for “Jim Cramer” books and only got 3 results. Why? Well, it seems he pens his books with the less colloquial “James J. Cramer.” Even more frustrating to me was that Jim Cramer IS in some of his book’s citations, just in the title and not the author field (which I used to search).
I love Biblio, don’t get me wrong. I think it provides a ton of value to the independent seller. I am less convinced as to whether or not it provides a strong enough value proposition for consumers. If Biblio does succeed in taking market share, many have asked who it will be taking it from. Most likely, it would be taking customers primarily from Abebooks and Alibris. Even with its impressive inventory growth (now 40 million books), it simply cannot compete with any of the big 3 in terms of newer titles, which really isolates Amazon from any Biblio surge.
