Our discussion concludes (or pauses) with an overview of
Booksense.com's search engine and
a quick peek at some Web sites that Len Vlahos, director of BookSense.com, considers interesting variations
on the theme.
---
Robert Gray: How would you rate the search engine for BookSense,com? What does it do well? What could it do better? I don't know whether you want to compare or contrast it directly with Amazon's, but I do know a lot of frontline booksellers still covertly use Amazon to answer customer questions on the sales floor quickly.
Len Vlahos: O.K., I'm probably a bit biased, but our search engine is really, really, really, really good. This past January we did a major overhaul and upgrade to the search engine, which, we believe, put our members on more equal footing with their competitors. And at the very least, our search engine is clearly, we believe, the best available to independent booksellers.
We made four crucial changes to our search engine:
a. The search results are now ordered by a combination of matching the search term to items in the database, Book Sense Bestseller sales and on-order quantities from Ingram. It used to be that you'd type "John Adams" into the keyword search and get nothing but books by authors named John Adams. Now the McCullough paperback comes out on top. Likewise a search on the keyword "kite" now displays the trade paper of Kite Runner first, and the rest of the books in the list (Curious George Flies a Kite, etc.) are all relevant results. This system allows us to anticipate what the customer might be looking for with a much greater degree of accuracy. I encourage you to visit independent bookseller Web sites NOT powered by BookSense.com and try these two searches, or any other search term you can dream up. We're confident that our results are far and away the best. (We even score pretty well against the corporate search engines.)
b. We license our book data from Ingram. Specifically, we use iPage (both iPage Active and iPage Extended). This database is truly remarkable for the breadth, depth and quality of the data. The problem is sometimes there's too much data. So with the new search engine, we've given stores the ability optionally to exclude books by inventory status. For example, a bookseller can exclude from search results all Out of Print and/or Special Order books. This allows each store to tailor the selection displayed in the search results to that store's liking. Some stores are excluding some categories; others are including all. The important thing for BookSense.com, with the search or anything else, is that the product be more flexible to meet the varying needs of our very independent members.
c. We've added "stemming." This means that different versions of the same root word will find the right result. Search for "Easter Rise" and you'll get "Easter Rising" even though it's not really a match.
d. The search is faster and more stable than it's ever been before.
To your specific point about frontline booksellers covertly using Amazon.com to answer customer questions, that has definitely been true in the past, but we are anecdotally hearing it's changing for stores with BookSense.com Web sites, largely because our search is so much better than it used to be.
RG: You showcase four Booksense Web sites (Tattered Cover, etc.) on your site as examples of what can be done with the template. Are there other pages you'd highlight as exemplary? Anything wild? Innovative?
LV: Village Books' staff picks page is one of the prettiest uses of the template I've seen. St. Helen's Bookshop is the exclusive home of signed Chuck Palahniuk books, which has been a huge financial boon to the store. (Through the sale of signed-Chuck books alone, they pay for their Web site). Alabama Booksmith has a very interesting signed first editions program. Vroman's Bookstore has created both a MySpace page and a Blog (and link to both from their home page).
---
Like most conversations, this one is incomplete (perhaps a better word is unfinished), but I hope it gives you a general sense of what the Booksense.com approach and philosophy currently entail. You can visit Booksense.com's site for more information. And we'll keep talking. You can send questions and comments to fresheyesnow@yahoo.com. I will share them with readers in upcoming columns.
As has been shown here during the past five months, many bookstores use Booksense.com's service. Many do not. I've highlighted alternatives in the past, and will continue to do so. If you've seen one you love, please let me know.
Ultimately all of this leads to the Big Question, posed some time ago by Pink Floyd:
Is there anybody out there?
Oh, yes.
The follow-up, and more important, question is: How do we let them know that there is somebody (aka bookstores) "in here."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)
---
Robert Gray: How would you rate the search engine for BookSense,com? What does it do well? What could it do better? I don't know whether you want to compare or contrast it directly with Amazon's, but I do know a lot of frontline booksellers still covertly use Amazon to answer customer questions on the sales floor quickly.
Len Vlahos: O.K., I'm probably a bit biased, but our search engine is really, really, really, really good. This past January we did a major overhaul and upgrade to the search engine, which, we believe, put our members on more equal footing with their competitors. And at the very least, our search engine is clearly, we believe, the best available to independent booksellers.
We made four crucial changes to our search engine:
a. The search results are now ordered by a combination of matching the search term to items in the database, Book Sense Bestseller sales and on-order quantities from Ingram. It used to be that you'd type "John Adams" into the keyword search and get nothing but books by authors named John Adams. Now the McCullough paperback comes out on top. Likewise a search on the keyword "kite" now displays the trade paper of Kite Runner first, and the rest of the books in the list (Curious George Flies a Kite, etc.) are all relevant results. This system allows us to anticipate what the customer might be looking for with a much greater degree of accuracy. I encourage you to visit independent bookseller Web sites NOT powered by BookSense.com and try these two searches, or any other search term you can dream up. We're confident that our results are far and away the best. (We even score pretty well against the corporate search engines.)
b. We license our book data from Ingram. Specifically, we use iPage (both iPage Active and iPage Extended). This database is truly remarkable for the breadth, depth and quality of the data. The problem is sometimes there's too much data. So with the new search engine, we've given stores the ability optionally to exclude books by inventory status. For example, a bookseller can exclude from search results all Out of Print and/or Special Order books. This allows each store to tailor the selection displayed in the search results to that store's liking. Some stores are excluding some categories; others are including all. The important thing for BookSense.com, with the search or anything else, is that the product be more flexible to meet the varying needs of our very independent members.
c. We've added "stemming." This means that different versions of the same root word will find the right result. Search for "Easter Rise" and you'll get "Easter Rising" even though it's not really a match.
d. The search is faster and more stable than it's ever been before.
To your specific point about frontline booksellers covertly using Amazon.com to answer customer questions, that has definitely been true in the past, but we are anecdotally hearing it's changing for stores with BookSense.com Web sites, largely because our search is so much better than it used to be.
RG: You showcase four Booksense Web sites (Tattered Cover, etc.) on your site as examples of what can be done with the template. Are there other pages you'd highlight as exemplary? Anything wild? Innovative?
LV: Village Books' staff picks page is one of the prettiest uses of the template I've seen. St. Helen's Bookshop is the exclusive home of signed Chuck Palahniuk books, which has been a huge financial boon to the store. (Through the sale of signed-Chuck books alone, they pay for their Web site). Alabama Booksmith has a very interesting signed first editions program. Vroman's Bookstore has created both a MySpace page and a Blog (and link to both from their home page).
---
Like most conversations, this one is incomplete (perhaps a better word is unfinished), but I hope it gives you a general sense of what the Booksense.com approach and philosophy currently entail. You can visit Booksense.com's site for more information. And we'll keep talking. You can send questions and comments to fresheyesnow@yahoo.com. I will share them with readers in upcoming columns.
As has been shown here during the past five months, many bookstores use Booksense.com's service. Many do not. I've highlighted alternatives in the past, and will continue to do so. If you've seen one you love, please let me know.
Ultimately all of this leads to the Big Question, posed some time ago by Pink Floyd:
Is there anybody out there?
Oh, yes.
The follow-up, and more important, question is: How do we let them know that there is somebody (aka bookstores) "in here."--Robert Gray (column archives available at Fresh Eyes Now)