IndieCommerce Webinar

Due to scheduling conflicts, the IndieCommerce webinar for April will now be held on the third Thursday, April 19. The webinar will be presented by IndieCommerce Specialist Chanthee Keokhaw and will cover the importance of mobile-friendly websites and tips for creating them. A sign up page will be available online next week.

Your Website & Independent Bookstore Day

What can we do to help you prepare your website for Independent Bookstore Day? Do you need assistance with IBD product promotion? We’re here to help you in any way we can. Just drop us an email at [email protected] or give us a call at 1-800-637-0037 (Option 2).

Bulk Upload of Your Staff’s Book Reviews

If your staff is generating a bunch of book reviews and you are finding it difficult to get them all online, we may have a solution for you. We’ve got a new bit of software and we are looking for a few stores to test it out for us. It will allow you to bulk upload large numbers of staff reviews to your IndieCommerce site. Want to test it for us? Contact [email protected] with “Testing Staff Reviews” in the subject line.

Tip of the Week

Book Availability statuses. Do you know what they mean? Did you know that you can customize the language? You can view what they mean or edit the language by going to Store -> Configuration -> Account Information and Preferences -> Configure Book Settings.  

For example, some titles may be marked as “Special Order.” “Special Order” means that a book is listed in the database but is not currently in stock with Ingram. This could be because the title is OSI at the publisher (usually a precursor to going out of print), because the title is just not carried by Ingram, or it could just be a popular title that Ingram has run out of for a couple of days.

If you change the wording of the status to something like “Special Order - Subject to Availability,” you can make it more obvious that these books may not be available if ordered, and some stores may post a block on the site that explains a little bit about availability.

For past editions of IndieCommunication, visit this page.