Rare Book Monthly
New Service for Booksellers -- BuyBundle
BuyBundle offers to promote books on the internet.
By Carl Burnham
Since January 2007, we at SouthpointBooks have been using a new service called BuyBundle. Whether books, audio, software, or videos, listings are free, and items are also listed through the new Google Base. If an Amazon Marketplace seller, inventory is synchronized automatically between Amazon and Google Base. When a book is sold, a 10 percent commission is charged, and payments are made via Paypal.
Recently, I had the opportunity to discuss with Venkatesh Akella, co-founder of BuyBundle, their new service and how it benefits booksellers.
1. Please elaborate on how BuyBundle came into being and the unique aspects of your service.
BuyBundle is the result of technology and ideas that we have been developing and refining over the past many months to create a better marketplace. The unique aspect of BuyBundle is its ability to take advantage of the integration of search engines with product catalogs, as we are seeing with Google base. This changes the traditional marketplace and comparison shopping game. We hope to make it possible for our sellers to easily build a strong relationship with their online customers
2. Do the founders have a background as booksellers?
Founders have sold books occasionally but they do not have a background in bookselling. We know technology and we will work with our sellers to build all the right features to deliver sales to them and value to the customer. We encourage our sellers to share with us what they would like this marketplace to look like.
3. How many sellers are you averaging now?
We are very pleased with our success, support and encouragement that we have had over the last 3 months of launching our service. We have hundreds of sellers that are in the marketplace and giving us their valuable insights to make it a better place.
4. What about allowing for the hosting of book images for older, non-ISBN books?
We are constantly looking to expand the capabilities of our platform. The above would be examples of features that we will introduce over time.
