Technology

A number of indie booksellers will soon be participating in Symtio, an innovative platform that allows customers to purchase e-books and audiobooks in stores and then download them anywhere there's an Internet connection. When consumers purchase books in the form of Symptio product cards (which look like book covers), the cards are activated at the register.

ABA member stores with IndieCommerce websites on the Drupal platform now have the ability to sell more than 220,000 e-books in several formats, including Adobe, Palm, and Microsoft. The new functionality allows consumers to purchase e-books and to have those books downloaded from store sites to consumers' computers and/or handheld devices.

In the three-plus years since Eric Wilska of The Bookloft in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and Susan Novotny of The Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza in Albany, New York, founded The Troy Book Makers, the print-on-demand service has "never not grown each month," said Wilska.

One could, if one wished, explain away David Taylor's enthusiasm for print-on-demand technology simply by noting that it's part of his job; he is, after all, president of Ingram's Lightning Source, a global provider of on-demand and distribution solutions for the publishing industry.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) confirmed last week that it has launched an investigation to determine whether the settlement of copyright infringement lawsuits brought against Google by the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers (AAP) violates the Sherman Antitrust Act.

In 2004, Google announced that it had entered into agreements with the New York Public Library and the libraries of Harvard, Stanford, the University of Michigan, and the University of Oxford to digitize books in their collections to form a searchable electronic database that would allow users to see snippets or a few lines from the scanned books.

Reaction to the IndieBound application for iPhone and iPod Touch, released Monday, has been overwhelming, with hundreds of downloads and many positive reviews.

With the launch of the IndieBound app for iPhone on Monday, April 20, independent booksellers are boldly going where they've never gone before: the rapidly growing realm of mobile applications.

Edelweiss, an online, interactive catalog system developed by Above the Treeline, will be available free to booksellers and other industry catalog users for the fall selling season. Booksellers interested in learning more about the system, whose list of participating publishers is at 13-plus and growing, can sign up now for a WebEx demonstration. Above the Treeline staff will also be demonstrating the product at BookExpo America this May and at all of the fall regional shows.

eCatalogs will soon be a reality that booksellers can't ignore.

Presented to the ABA Board of Directors at its March 2009 Meeting

By Len Vlahos, ABA Chief Program Officer

History

In 1978 Douglas Adams envisioned a slim electronic folio that contained all the useful knowledge of all the people on all the planets in the universe. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as Adams imagined it, would let you carry in your pocket a device that functioned like an amalgam of Google and an e-book. And while he was trying to be funny, Adams, it turns out, was prescient.

On Tuesday, March 3, representatives from Above the Treeline, nine publishers, Ingram Book Group, and the American Booksellers Association met at Random House's New York City offices for discussions about ongoing field tests of Edelweiss, Treeline's online, interactive catalog product. About 30 booksellers are currently testing the product, which was developed with input from ABA, independent retailers, and publishers.

Booksellers who missed the popular ABA Winter Institute program "Using Multimedia to Market Your Store" -- which Tova Beiser of Brown University Bookstore described as full of ideas that "seem really cool and worth doing" -- can find something of a recap in a downloadable PDF create

One of the fastest growing services on the Web is a paragon of pith, and is playing an increasingly important role for businesses of all sizes.

The IndieBound movement is growing ... in bookstores and other independent retailers nationwide, online at IndieBound.org, and now on the social networking site Facebook.