Leave it to Abebooks to come up with yet another way to alienate the core group of booksellers that their company was built on.
I blogged about this rating system and it's utter disregard for the integrity of bookselling while it was in beta mode.
Here is a snippet:
AbeBooks is working on a rating system for booksellers based on the star rating systems that appear at other online marketplaces. Unfortunately, this bookseller rating system has nothing to do with bookselling and everything to do with order fulfillment. The amount of stars you earn is based exclusively on your order fulfillment percentage. Nothing more nothing less. The system is skewed toward failure for the bookseller.There was quite a bit of opposition to the rating system and the management at Abebooks were putting out a lot of fires during the beta period. There was suddenly an account manager for rare and antiquarian booksellers on the front lines dealing with the bookseller uproar.
Well, they went ahead and launched the rating system with only some minor changes. As I've said before at some point the tide is going to turn, and there are signs that is beginning to turn, where the negatives far outweigh the positives and it no longer makes sense to sell your books on these types of sites.
It is always hard to jump out of a revenue stream but it sure beats being drowned in one.
Stephen J. Gertz at the David Brass Rare Books blog has a nice rant on the issue. He also points out that Barter Books in the UK is combating this deception with a rating system of their own. They have devised the Booklisting Site Ratings where they rate all the online marketplaces.
Here's the deal:
Booklisting Site Ratings
* Booklisting site ratings are based on the quality of the listings (accuracy and honesty of listings etc.)
* The expertise, ethics and quality of service of participating booksellers
* Booklisting sites with higher ratings charge no commission fee over and above the bookseller's price and do not allow what are known as megalisters and relisters - booksellers who use 'boiler plate' descriptions because they either do not have the book in stock or have not bothered to catalogue it properly, leading to indifferent service for the customer.
2 star rating ABE (Advanced Book Exchange)
2 star rating Alibris
1 star rating Amazon
3 star rating Biblio
3 star rating Choosebooks / ZVAB
1 star rating eBay
5 star rating IBookNet (Independent Booksellers' Network)
5 star rating ILAB (International League of Antiquarian Booksellers
5 star rating IOBA (Independent Online Booksellers Association)
5 star rating PBFA (Provincial Book Fairs Association)
5 star rating TomFolio
5 star rating UKBookWorld
Key:
5 star rating No commission charges and strong quality rules
4 star rating Low commission charges and strong quality rules
3 star rating Medium commission charges and strong quality rules
2 star rating High commission charges and variable quality rules
1 star rating High commission charges and weak quality rules
Now we're talking.
2 comments:
While the ABE star system is unsatisfactory as it relates to but a single criterion for its listers, we might do well to reflect on how it might be if it was otherwise. Remember that, until he was forced from Paradise, Mr. Flatsigned was touted by Ebay as an expert - his feedback was impressively positive, and a stranger to our world would easily have concluded that he was a god to us. What ABE is doing is doubtlessly and probably admittedly to them, self-serving. I pointed out to them (and I don't know as they addressed this) that these reprint services that list could only have a 5 star rating.
Who would we want to vett our listings and rate us as booksellers? Those of us in the "know" know, as it were, but we have our own biases and prejudices. I would rate booksellers whose knowledge derives entirely from what they find listed by others on the internet very low. However, they might defend themselves and say, fine, but mine is cheaper so it's better for the customer, comparing themselves to an online retailer who prices a piece of equipment more cheaply than the merchant with a shop and a knowledgeable staff.
I must say that from my own meager experience ordering books online (just books, that is, not rare ones), the most frustrating part has been waiting a day or two to find that the item was not in stock. For ABE's business model this is very harmful, and truth is, the large number of customers ordering modest books are probably the ones that matter most to them.
The reason we are being punished (about the only time a sale in not completed) is when a book sells in shop and does not get removed from our database which usually happens because we are busy talking with our customers and simply forget. I'm sure to have lower sales now, bad me, actually running a real store- what was I thinking.
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