IndieCommerce

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.

BookSense.com recently announced several new features that improve and enhance the entire family of BookSense.com websites, as well as a schedule for maintenance that will result in some minor down time.

Scheduled Down Time

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.

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.

This week, BookSense.com announced the launch of a redesigned BookSense.com search engine that is expected to significantly increase the relevancy of consumers' search results. "The new search has been improved in a number of ways and will provide more consistent results in terms of speed and stability," said BookSense.com Director Len Vlahos.

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

A fraudulent order scheme, which first came to the attention of the American Booksellers Association in October through a discussion on BookWeb's Idea Exchange, continues to plague booksellers from coast-to-coast, with reports coming in from booksellers spanning from the Southeast to the Pacific Northwest. The scam involves a person posing as a teacher of sewing classes who asks the bookstore to order several sewing titles for a class to be held in the area.

In an ongoing effort to improve BookSense.com and make it more bookseller and consumer friendly, its bookstore search capabilities have been consolidated and enhanced.

Here is the latest news and an update on improvements to BookSense.com.

Booksellers posting to BookWeb's Idea Exchange have reported a fraudulent order scheme that appears to have been replicated in several different cities. The scam involves a person posing as a teacher of sewing classes who asks the bookstore to order several sewing titles for a class to be held in the area. The "teacher" then promises to tell students to buy the book at the store in question.

BookSense.com technical staff will be performing planned maintenance on the site this Sunday, October 9, from 6:00 p.m. to midnight Eastern Time. For at least part of this time, and possibly all of it, BookSense.com stores and their customers will be unable to access store websites. Administrative pages will also be inaccessible.

A letter from Chris Morrow of Northshire Bookstore in Manchester Center, Vermont, followed by letters from other local independent booksellers, recently convinced Vermont Public Radio (VPR) to remove a link to Amazon.com from its website, www.vpr.net/, and to replace it with one to BookSense.com.

BookSense.com's servers are being moved this Friday, June 10. Customers attempting to access BookSense.com websites during the move will see a "We're Down for Maintenance" page.

Booksellers' websites and admin pages will be inaccessible beginning at approximately 11:00 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday, June 10. Access is expected to be restored by midday on Saturday, June 11, but it is possible that it may take the entire weekend to deal with unforeseen events.