Rare Book Monthly
Around the Books Sites: Alibris Offers Listing Tools, Biblio Opens U.K. Site, Abe's Latest Top Ten
News from around the listing sites.
By Michael Stillman
Alibris has announced the availability of a set of tools to help their sellers manage and improve their listings and set prices. The tools are available free to Alibris sellers, though they can help manage listings on other sites as well. The purpose, as described by Alibris CEO Brian Elliott, is to provide independent sellers with "the tools they need to list better and sell more."
Dubbed "My Inventory Manager" (MIM), the new service includes the following tools. The ability to create listings using a database of 11 million ISBN numbers plus 2 million music and movie UPCs (unlike the other major book sites, Alibris also lists music and movies). Sellers will also be able to upload their images to the listings. These listings can then be downloaded for use offline or for placement on other sites. MIM will also provide sellers with access to sales data and current market prices for books with ISBN numbers or music and movies with UPCs. Sellers will be able to use the tool to automatically reprice items on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. Explains CEO Elliott, "'My Inventory Manager' aggregates the tools we've developed and improved over a decade of online book, music, and movie sales into a single, one-stop suite for our sellers."
Alibris has also initiated a college textbook buyback program. Alibris has already been selling new and used textbooks, so this service allows students to get some money back on these texts when the course is finished. The buyback, however, is not limited to texts purchased from Alibris. They will buy such books purchased anywhere, and believe their offers will regularly be higher than those offered by campus bookstores. Anyone with textbooks to sell can go to Alibris' buyback page to find out how much Alibris will offer. Offers include a prepaid shipping label so the student incurs no shipping expense. To find out what Alibris is willing to pay, just go to the following page: http://buyback.alibris.com.
Biblio announced the opening of a UK site to serve customers in England and Europe. The site, www.Biblio.co.uk, will feature primarily books from sellers in the U.K. and Europe. Biblio CEO Brendan Sherar explains the reason for this separate location as, "We believe most UK customers prefer to shop for secondhand books from within their own country and Europe, and tend to purchase abroad only when the title is not available locally." The new site will also post books from other regions if the subject matter is of European interest. However, Biblio says that most listings will originate from the U.K. and Europe, and "general trade titles shipping from outside of Europe will generally be discouraged."
AbeBooks has released their list of the top ten highest prices paid on their site during the month of April. Here they are.
10. An Early Arabic Manuscript of Sharh Alfadh Al Tanbih by Abu Zakariyya Muhiyiddin Yahya Bin Mirri Al Hizami Al Haurani Al Nawawi. That man must have dreaded giving out autographs. This is a 13th century manuscript (naturally) copy of an Islamic law scholar's writing. $4,000.
