Online booksellers worried about dismantling of ABE stores

If you’ve been selling books online for a while, you’ll remember that Amazon’s zShops enabled sellers to create a customized storefront, complete with your own categories and keywords. If you were lucky enough to have a zShop a decade ago, you probably got tons of repeat business from it. I know I did — my zShop generated lots of repeat business, and commissions for Amazon.

Now zShops are history, and if you want a full-featured Store on Amazon, you’ve got to pay $59.99 a month.

Now some booksellers are wondering whether there are changes afoot at AbeBooks to disable similar features there, too. The fears of some booksellers when Amazon bought ABE may be coming true.

If you’re not a registered bookseller at ABE, you won’t be able to log onto this message thread. But here’s that way it begins:

CHANGES TO ABE “STORES”

I don’t know if this has been addressed or if anyone has put in ‘past’ effort to develop a STORE

In any event as with the former Amazon zShops our Categories or Subjects have disappeared and has been replaced with a Search Bar. This turns our Stores into Binary Beach Blankets.

A prospective Buyer unless they know the Title in advance and have a reason why they MUST buy from you and only you will never use the function.

Under the old method you would have for example a heading of ANTIQUES a sub-heading of WATCHES i.e. ANTIQUE>WATCHES
1. the Buyer found your Store via interest in a book you’re selling.
2. they want another book on Antique Watches and are unfamiliar with what is available on he subject.
3. they would like to buy both from you.
4. With “Browse by Subject/Category” they can They CANNOT WITH A SEARCH BAR

This is not the Book-Buying experience. This is a Virtual Domain we operate in, but it is based real world function. Or at least should be.

The Bars are useless. After the closing of my zShop, as I predicted, multiple sales, sales of sets and series on Amazon all but disappeared.

The zShops were missed by those who “worked” to create the store. The Simple task of of making up your own Directory. I used Amazons Category list to create my Directory. On ABe I did the same. 2 years ago ABE required we change this to the BISAC Codes. This was an insane task as the list had 6500 subject areas – Abe only would allow us to to have 100-200 Subjects and these were number based. Now with the “conversion” to a Search Bar, I feel I should be reimbursed for my wasted time.

We are paying a Monthly Fee for nothing more than the ability to UPLOAD ONLY. I hope you are all enjoying this. I am not.

Since ABE [now Amazon]owns “Chrislands” and Amazon owns the equivalent “WebStores”; I am wondering if we will have to “BUY, RENT or LEASE” a “Chrisland” Site in order to get our Categories back?

This issue was first raised a couple of weeks ago here on Amazon’s bookseller board.

I don’t know if this is a glitch or not. If it’s a policy change, it would fit right in with the dreadful practice of big Internet platforms like eBay and Amazon. They buy out their smaller competitors, claiming this will help everyone. Then they disable all the features of the Web sites they acquired, and leave them to wilt and die — effectively creating a monopoly for themselves.

Remember how great a bookselling venue Half.com was before eBay bought it?

Related posts:

1. Amazon postpones deleting zShops listings, plans solution for non-UPC products
2. eBay wants booksellers back at Half.com