Planned Newsletter

Latest changes to this page: 08/12/2006, 19:20 PST

               

 

08/12/06

 

Last night (Friday) I attended the "get to know one another" social gathering of the 2006 Independent Amazon Booksellers' Conference at the SeaTac Marriott here in Seattle.  It was great to meet so many enthusiastic booksellers and some of my book customers.  It was also nice to see such a diverse cross-section of the industry.  There are small independent booksellers, mid-size booksellers, and a few mega booksellers in attendance as well as vendors representing many of the services available to online booksellers. 

 

I was shocked to hear from some of the mega sellers that they had purchased my book, read it, and found it to be a very useful resource.  It was truly flattering that one of these mega booksellers (over 2,000,000 books in his inventory!!!)  recognized me as being the author of "Online Bookselling" and told me he purchased it back in early March and really enjoyed it.  He even told me he would post a review in the next few days so you won't think I made this up.  Please pardon me for losing my composure here and going on about this, but the comments from all of my readers that I met last night and all through the day today are more of a rush to me than being in a deep stall on a 777 and I have been on more than 450.

 

I have also had the opportunity to meet a few wholesale/remainder book distributors that are not mentioned in my book.  I will be sharing their names and website addresses with you in the newsletter as well as some of the information they have shared in conversations.

 

There have been presentations by several of the software/services providers we are all aware of, but there have also been some by newcomers that I will talk about.

 

At lunch I sat and talked with Kevin O'Brien of Spaceware, the providers of AMan Pro for booksellers.  Kevin has agreed to provide me with more information about AMan Pro to include in the newsletter and I appreciate the opportunity I had to speak with him.

 

One of my book customers, Sara S., provided me with a fantastic source for finding inventory that I am sure is available to almost all of you, but was totally unknown to me.  Like I commented below, I may have written a book about selling books online, but the real value of the newsletter will come from the contributions of all of you.  That said, I am still hoping that many of you will send in your stories, thoughts, tips, discoveries, questions, and answers in time to be included in the newsletter.

 

We heard a few more presentations after lunch and then split up into working groups to prepare the questions we will pose to the Amazon.com representatives.  These questions were then prioritized and reduced to six questions from each group.  We will be posing these questions tomorrow when we are addressed by some of Amazon.com's senior executives.

 

I am taking notes and will present everything I think is valuable to you in October's newsletter.  I also want to remind all the readers of this website that the newsletter distribution will be restricted to the customers of my book that request to be on the distribution list.  Before I send it out I will be matching the email address of the distribution request to the email addresses in my customer database.  If there is no match, the newsletter will not be sent to the email address on the distribution request.  If you have any concern that your email address will not match the one provided when you ordered one of my books or software, be sure to include your first and last name (the one used to purchase the book or software) as I will be looking at these too. 

 

There are two reasons for me restricting the recipients of the newsletter:

 

  1. Because the newsletter is a combination of the input of my customers and because it is oriented toward enhancing the material in my book, it is only fair that the recipients be restricted to those that bought my book (or software), i.e., the purpose for buying my book was to learn more about online bookselling and I do not think it would be fair to freely provide the quality of information that will be in the newsletter to anyone that asks.

  2. Owing to the amount of time I am putting into the compilation of the newsletter and the effort involved, I am inclined to share the content with only those that have purchased my book.  Maybe that sounds a little harsh - I don't mean for it to sound that way - but my time is worth a lot to me and spending the time to assemble and distribute a worthwhile newsletter is a way of me saying thank you to all of my customers and providing them with more information to help make them successful.

Thus far I must say that the cost to register and the time to attend the conference have been more than worthwhile.  I would encourage anyone that can attend next year to make room on their calendar.

 

I will have more to say as the conference continues, so stay posted.

 

Thank you to those people that have followed up and left feedback on Amazon.com about my book(s) and/or software.  If you have not already left feedback and would like to do so, I have included instructions at the bottom of this page.

About the Newsletter

 

At the request of several customers that would like to submit questions, tips, their stories, and in general to have some interaction with other online-booksellers, I have decided to put together a newsletter each month that will be available to all customers of any version of my book.

 

If you are interested in receiving the newsletter, please send me a message with the subject line reading, "Please Send Newsletter," and I will add you to the distribution list.  If you use the email link below, it will automatically fill out the subject line with, "Please Send Newsletter."

 

Send your "Please Send Newsletter" request to:

 

newsletter@online-bookselling.com

 

Please include your name, this helps me confirm your email address is that of a customer.

 

 

Some of the things I would like to include in the newsletter are:

 

Marketplace News & Changes

Comments & Questions From Subscribers

Helpful Tips From Other Readers

Comments - What Works For You And What Doesn't

Other Recommended Resource/Reference Books

New Or Newly Discovered Tools For Online Booksellers

New Or Newly Discovered Wholesale/Remainder Book Sources

 

As much as I enjoy writing, I think the newsletter will be more valuable to all of you if it includes your input.  So, please email me with anything you would like to see in the next newsletter and I will include it if it is appropriate.  I will even include constructive criticism of my book if you have some to offer, and I will post a response to any that you may have. 

 

 

I am particularly interested in having readers submit:

 

Stories of what they have found useful in the book and how they are doing in the online bookselling business, i.e., your story of success and/or struggles.

 

Questions about online-bookselling that can be addressed by not only me, but other subscribers.  Just because I wrote a book about it does not mean I have all the answers, and even when I have an answer, another online bookseller might have an answer that works better for you.

 

What has worked well for you.

 

Tools & tips you have found particularly useful.

 

Your good or bad experiences with services associated with or intended to support online booksellers, including, marketplaces, software providers, online postage services, and/or wireless lookup services.

 

A list of your unbelievable book finds, i.e., your gems.

 

Marketplace tips & suggestions.

 

A link to your website if you would like to affiliate with me and/or other online booksellers.

 

Each month I will have a section devoted to changes in the online bookselling business, but I would like to devote the majority of the newsletter to the input/questions of subscribers.  This being the case, the success and value of the newsletter will rely in great part on what all of you submit in the form of questions, answers, and comments.

 

I sincerely hope you opt-in to the distribution of this newsletter and that you share your questions, answers, and experiences with the other subscribers.

 

 

All I ask is that you put "Newsletter Input" in the subject line of any email messages you send me for the newsletter, including questions, answers, comments, or anything else you want included in the newsletter.  This will make it easy for me to identify your email amidst all the spam I get.  If you use the email link below, it will automatically fill out the subject line with, "Newsletter Input."

 

newsletter@online-bookselling.com

 

 

As subscriber questions are received, I will post them to this website for other subscribers to respond.

 

Anyone visiting this website will be able to read the questions I post, but the answers and other subscriber input will be restricted to the emailed newsletter and those that have purchased my book.

 

I have a database of all customers that purchased through PayPal and on Amazon.com from Veverka Books and Diskhead Books, this will constitute all of the eligible subscribers.

 

 

I will be sending out an announcement letter to all of the people in my database in case they are not following changes to this website, but I will only do this once because I do not want to abuse the fact that I have your email addresses.  For those of you that purchased my book through Amazon.com, I do not have your email addresses, Amazon.com not longer allows access to customer email addresses, so you will need to email me.

 

A few customers have asked me not to give out their email address.  I will not sell, give away, or in any other manner provide your email addresses to anyone else unless you specifically ask me to do so.

 

 

If you would like to do something for me in return for the time I will invest in compiling the newsletter, I would very much appreciate you taking the time to visit Amazon.com and writing a fair review of my book.  I have included hyperlinks below that will direct you to the appropriate version that you purchased.

 

If you purchased your copy directly from me using PayPal, you can still leave a review on Amazon.com if you have an Amazon.com account.

 

After you choose the appropriate hyperlink below and arrive at the Amazon.com website, just scroll down to the "Product Details" header  and click on the "Write a review" hyperlink.

 

If you purchased the CD-ROM version, Click Here to leave a review.

 

If you purchased the Paperback version, Click Here to leave a review.

 

If you purchased "Bookkeeping for Booksellers," Click Here to leave a review.  For software, you have to scroll down to the "Customer Reviews" (near the bottom of the Amazon.com product page) to leave a review.