Technology

The American Booksellers Association has signed an agreement with Ingram Digital Ventures that will enable bookstores participating in the BookSense.com program to sell ebooks in three formats -- Palm, Adobe, and Microsoft -- beginning sometime in 2007.

Pubnet, an electronic ordering option for booksellers from Bowker, has announced the introduction of Instant Response, a program that gives booksellers immediate acknowledgement for purchase orders placed with participating publishers. In addition, Instant Response is designed to serve as an alternative to a publisher's direct electronic dial-up ordering system. According to Pubnet, it is anticipated that some publishers will be phasing out such systems after the introduction of ISBN-13 in January 2007.

If data is the name of the game, it's crucial that independent bookstores make sure they are represented in the starting lineup. One of the best ways for ABA member stores to do so is by facilitating the collection of independent bookstore sales data via confidential reporting to the Book Sense Bestseller List.

Last week, in a series of meetings arranged by the American Booksellers Association, U.S. publishers and wholesalers had the opportunity to learn about batch.co.uk, a service of the Booksellers Association of the United Kingdom and Ireland, that is designed to help reduce overhead in the supply chain by providing a single, consolidated payment solution.

The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) recently announced that it had received several reports of books carrying a Bookland EAN bar code with an erroneous number encoded in the bar code and displayed below the bar code itself. "The erroneous number begins with '979', an invalid prefix for today's Bookland EAN and an ISBN range not yet activated by International or National ISBN Agencies," said the BISG statement. "The erroneous number is unlikely to be recognized by the computer systems of many booksellers who are not yet prepared for ISBN-13.

Book Sense and Earthcomber, a mobile marketing service that matches people on the go with their personal interests, have partnered to offer the directory of Book Sense store locations in a mobile GPS-enabled format for Palm OS and Windows Mobile PDAs and smart phones.

On April 3, a partnership of six nonprofit publishers, the nation's largest book wholesaler, and a group of independent and chain bookstores, announced a plan to provide book lovers with an on-demand choice in format, similar to those available to consumers of music, film, and television.

By Peter Osnos, Senior Fellow for Media at The Century Foundation

The book is an eternal artifact of civilization. Sacred texts. Classics by a crackling fire; a great story; a library lined with the handsome bindings of favorites; a bookstore where browsing is a joy of reminiscence and discovery.

Through a new partnership between the American Booksellers Association and Above the Treeline (ATL), ABA member booksellers can now subscribe to ATL's online software product -- designed to help bookstores improve finances by optimizing inventory selection -- at a discounted rate and without the initial set-up fee.