E-commerce

This is the last opportunity for booksellers to add their names to an important ABA letter calling for sales tax fairness. The letter will soon be sent to the U.S. governors in the 45 states that collect sales tax and will call on them to enforce existing tax regulations by making sure that retailers with a physical presence in their states collect sales tax on online sales.

While hundreds of booksellers have signed on to the letter, ABA is hoping that even more booksellers will join their colleagues before the letter is mailed.

There is still time for booksellers to add their names to an ABA letter calling on U.S. governors in the 45 states that collect sales tax to enforce existing tax regulations by making sure that retailers with a physical presence in their states collect sales tax on online sales. Hundreds of booksellers have already added their names to the letter, but ABA is looking to include the signatures of as many ABA member stores in these states as possible.

The troubling effects of falling tax revenues continue to multiply for elected officials facing rapidly growing deficits. Forty-one states collected less revenue in fiscal 2002 than they had planned for in their budgets. Nationwide, sales tax collections were 3.2 percent lower than originally budgeted, personal income tax collections missed states' targets by 12.8 percent, and corporate income taxes were 21.5 percent lower than projected.

The American Booksellers Association has once again called on the U.S. governors in the 45 states that collect sales tax to fully enforce existing regulations by ensuring that retailers with a physical presence in their state collect sales tax on online sales.

Over the past few days, a number of booksellers have contacted ABA to say that they have received fraudulent orders from overseas -- via either their retail Web sites or e-mail -- for large numbers of hardcover books, often Bibles or medical texts.

Here's a reminder of important e-commerce advice that BookSense.com sent to participating stores earlier in the year.

Though BookSense.com ended its free trial at the end of September, a large percentage of trial participants are continuing with the BookSense.com program. Since October 31, when BTW reported that BookSense.com had welcomed 20 new member bookstores to the fold, another 19 bookstores that participated in the BookSense.com free trial officially joined the BookSense.com program.

Six regional associations are working with BookSense.com to offer to their members who have a BookSense.com Web site the opportunity to add their association's regional holiday catalog to their site. It's as simple as adding a link to their content page, said Len Vlahos, director for BookSense.com. "This is just one more fine example of how regional associations and ABA can work together to the benefit of all their member bookstores," he told BTW.

With the Thanksgiving holiday approaching -- and the starting gun for the holiday season poised to fire -- many consumers appear ready to turn to the Internet for gift buying.

BookSense.com recently announced that it has created the BookSense.com User's Council (BUC). The council was established, in part, as a result of the suggestions of numerous booksellers, and, while it is not a governance body, it will provide valuable feedback and will play a key role in helping ABA staff determine the future direction of BookSense.com. "We do seek a lot of bookseller feedback, but we thought it would be nice to formalize the process," said Len Vlahos, BookSense.com director.

On Wednesday, November 6, booksellers and free speech advocates filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of South Carolina a complaint asking that a South Carolina law be permanently enjoined. The statute criminalizes any work communicated on the Internet that is accessible in South Carolina and contains a depiction of nudity or sexual conduct considered to be "harmful to minors." Booksellers are concerned that the law could be construed to include material with sexual content sold on their Web sites.

The BookSense.com free trial may have ended, but many trial participants are continuing with the BookSense.com program. Since September 30, over 20 bookstores that participated in the free trial have officially joined the BookSense.com program, and "we're expecting more than double that number to ultimately convert from the free trial to the official product," Len Vlahos, BookSense.com director, told BTW. These bookstores join an ever-growing BookSense.com family, which currently numbers more than 230 bookstores.

On Monday, October 28, Virginia's Internet "harmful to minors" statute was back in court. Before a three-judge panel in the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond, Virginia, the state of Virginia asked that a U.S. District Court's judgment that permanently enjoined a statute criminalizing Internet communications deemed harmful to minors be overturned and the statute reinstated.

On Thursday, September 12, the California Board of Equalization (BOE) issued a Memorandum Opinion stating that Barnesandnoble.com was obligated to pay California back use taxes for a period of four-plus months -- from November 15, 1999, to March 31, 2000. BOE ruled that, because the bricks-and-mortar Barnes & Noble stores were offering customers coupons that discounted purchases made at its online store, Barnesandnoble.com had established a physical presence, or nexus, in the state of California.

Recently, BookSense.com announced a new functionality that will allow bookstores to upload their store's in-stock quantities of items to the BookSense.com database. For participating bookstores, BookSense.com's new inventory upload feature creates an "On Our Shelves Now" inventory status for any book that the store has in stock. As a result, the customer knows not only that a title is available, but also that it is actually in stock.

Published writers who don't know HTML from a hole in the wall can now set up their own multi-service Web sites in a day or two at minimal cost under the auspices of the Authors Guild, according to Paul Aiken, the Guild's executive director.

Aiken told BTW that many authors are responding to the Guild's offer of individual Web sites with the capacity to feature up to 50 titles with links to online booksellers, to post book excerpts, to host discussions, and to send and manage e-newsletters.