A long-simmering dispute between the Authors Guild and Amazon.com returned to the news when the organization e-mailed over 5,000 members encouraging them to remove links from the authors’ Web sites to Amazon.com. The Authors Guild acted after Amazon.com stepped up its marketing efforts for its "Amazon Marketplace" program, where consumers can sell used books, CDs, and other items. The guild has over 8,000 members, and more than 700 of them have Web sites.

BookSense.com has begun a marketing program designed to encourage booksellers who may not have evaluated the program since its commercial launch in November 2000 to look again. Len Vlahos, BookSense.com director, told BTW that since BookSense.com first went online in the summer of 2000 in a live beta test "the product has experienced so much growth and development -- we really want stores to take another look."