An "Amazon price" feature now appears in a few places in BookMooch.

• On your wishlist and save-for-later page, a new "Amazon" column now appears.

• A price is shown when you add a book to your wishlist, when you look at the book details, and when you look at related editions.

• In your wishlist, you can set your "preferred Amazon store" for where you are in the world. This is set automatically to the likely country BM thinks you're in, but you can set it to whatever you like. Prices and links will be only to that specific Amazon store. A pleasant surprise is that (in my experience) books of all languages are widely available from all the Amazon used book stores.

• You can hide used book prices by choosing "hide Amazon prices" in either your wishlist or save-for-later. The setting is "sticky" and applies throughout BookMooch.

• On the book details page, a small note explains "this book is available for mooching, you don't need to buy it" when the book can be mooched.

There is one slightly odd thing about how the feature works, that I need to explain:

• Amazon limits us to 2000 price lookups per hour

• A price lookup takes about 2 seconds

• Therefore, BookMooch cannot lookup prices "immediately" as you load a page. If BM did, we would (a) run out of our 2000 lookups per hour, and (b) slow every page down by 2 seconds (or worse, for wishlists and related editions)

• So... every page which displays a price shows the most recent price we've obtained from Amazon.

• If there is no price displayed, or the price is more than a day old, in the background we queue up a list of books we want new prices for.

• Amazon does provide a complicated way for BM to lookup prices for 20 books at one time, so that BM is able to find prices for up to 40,000 books per hour, using this background technique.

• So... if you load your wishlist up the first time, and see no prices, wait a minute, go back to it, and you should have prices filled out then. The same thing applies to the "book details" page.

For the future, I'm looking into including ABE Books prices into the mix, possibly a "low price" alert feature, and other possibilities.

This feature is very much a work in progress and will change as I figure things out and based on your feedback.

-john

How about a bookfinder.com link? They will look at ABE and Alibris and Amazon. It is where I go after Amazon.

I'll be even happier when the full wishlist is back instead of just 100. I also very much agree with the multiple tabs request posted by Amy W.

At first I didn't think much of it then I started using it a lot. When I added a bunch of new books and couldn't remember if I addded something, etc... Oh well, I did see a few people complain about it, so...

Why was the comment I made earlier removed? Please don't ask for comments and then just post the ones you agree with. Please. This isn't that kind of place.

I can understand a comment such as "I don't like this feature", but I have trouble accepting the comment "I don't think anyone else should be allowed to have this feature either".

I know that some people don't like this price feature. That's fine, and is a totally reasonable position. It's one of the reasons I made the price feature easy to completely hide.

However, insisting that nobody else should have the feature because you don't like it, well that just goes against a very core value of mine.

I have no problem with opinions, but I have a huge personal problem with people curtailing other people's freedoms or imposing their own decisions on others.

If you don't like the price feature, I totally understand why, and I'm trying to be very sensitive to that.

For example, I did not add the price feature on the "add book to inventory" as I previously suggested, based on feedback on the forum.

However, it's really my belief that people buying used books that aren't on BookMooch is a good thing for many reasons, among them that BM users are then more likely to recirculate those hard-to-find books back into BM. And yes, it also helps fund BookMooch in a non-imposing way that doesn't ask people to give BM money.

-john

I'll be even happier when the full wishlist is back instead of just 100.

It's back to showing your entire wishlist. There was a bug I was seeing, but didn't know how to immediately fix, so I temporarily only showed wishlists up to 100 books, and mentioned this at the top of the blog entry. This only lasted about 2 hours, and it's now back to normal, and hopefully the bug is fixed.

-john

Also opening a new tab for each time you click on an Amazon link would be better as I will go to see if I can find 4 book at the 4 for 3 bargain and bookmooch kind of takes over that tab

Good suggestion, thanks! I've done that, or at least I've done what I think you meant -- let me know if it works as you want now. Each amazon link opens in a new tab now.

I still think the date added column was a great feature of the new wishlists that was taken away

I decided to make the bare-bones table for wishlists show as little as possible, for people who want a simple page.

The "date added" column is still there, but you need to choose the "show details" option, and then that column (re)appears.

-john

one suggestion: I think it would be useful if clicking on the price in the wishlist went straight to the Amazon page, rather than to the book details page.

hibou

one suggestion: I think it would be useful if clicking on the price in the wishlist went straight to the Amazon page, rather than to the book details page.

The reason I did it that way is that the wishlist page only shows the lowest price, it doesn't show the other two prices. If, for example, the used one is $0.01, but a new one is available for $1, both +postage, I might be inclined to pay the extra dollar and buy the new one. I thought you should have the opportunity to see the other prices before making a buying decision.

If I end up adding other used book sources (such as ABE books) I think it's even more important to show all the prices at various sources. For example, some people will prefer to pay a little bit more to get a book from an ABE store than from an Amazon store, because the bookseller gets a fairer deal.

Also, I thought it'd be better to leave the current behavior of "click on the row to get book details" and not have some columns that do special things.

However, I did agonize over it a bit, and ran it both ways a few times, to see which one "felt" right.

-john

Jo Jo

OK, really
with SS shipping $2.58 The only way to see this is still go there.
without SS ship $0.01 + 3.99
New $2.58 + 3.99 (no SS shipping)
and Amazon $7.99

I really like to know if I can get a book for less than $3 shipping included. $0.01 read to me $4 and doesn't tell me if there is a super saving discount making a great price. If it is on Amazon like this Amanda Quick is, I'm not going to wait and put it on my wishlist, but buy it for $2.58 (about what it cost to ship a single book). Of course before ordering from an International member, I would buy the $4 book.

Now for the Amazon price, that helps me as a $8.99, $7.99, or $6.99 usually has a 4 for the price of 3 offer as a massmarket paperback ;)

Is it possible to list the postage for a book, and not the post office prices?

Unfortunately, no. Amazon doesn't provide that feature, and they also don't provide us with enough information about where in the world the book is (or if they're shipping it, or the bookseller is) to calculate a shipping price.

I really like to know if I can get a book for less than $3 shipping included. $0.01 read to me $4 and doesn't tell me if there is a super saving discount making a great price. If it is on Amazon like this Amanda Quick is, I'm not going to wait and put it on my wishlist, but buy it for $2.58 (about what it cost to ship a single book). Of course before ordering from an International member, I would buy the $4 book.

You're absolutely right, but unfortunately that's a limit of the feature. Shipping is a very complicated subject!

I still think that this will result in new members trying to get 'top dollar' for their books, and lower the number of newer books avail. on bookmooch..

I'm not sure I see how this would happen on a regular basis. Prices are only shown for books on your wishlist, or if you click through on the details. People giving books away aren't pushed to see the theoretical prices their books might fetch on Amazon.

I've also myself listed books for sale on Amazon and eBay, and found that any book worth less than $20 is probably not worth selling, because of the fees and hassle (and that there usually is no real buyer for the expensive used books, the high prices are fanciful). I think bookselling is really best left to people who do it in bulk.

Umm John, is there still going to be some slowness on the server for a while tonite? My wishlist takes quite a bit of time to load, even after I turn off the prices feature.

Sometimes the server get slow after a software update from me. This is because lots of information is "cached" and a software update clears the cache. The slowness may last up to a few hours. Hopefully, you're find the server speed as "back to normal" now.

-john

Bookfinder.com seems to find the lowest price of the book with shipping. I wonder how they do that? The price result is book cost plus the shipping? Try it out and see. I really don't expect BM to find my prices for me though. :-) I've been pretty happy with a link to Amazon.

If you haven't heard it enough, thanks for all the work!

Another edit--
How about a way to find all the reviews a certain member has made. I find Cindy (USA:NV) has a bunch of reviews with all the lists of the series. Really helpful. Would love to be able to look up all her reviews.

BookFinder is a subsidiary of ABEbooks, which (as you know) is a subsidiary of Amazon, so you may be OK with it contractually.

It had been my impression that BookMooch was a community of like-minded book lovers, who might not always agree, but who were always willing to discuss and explain in an honest and above-board way. Would it be possible to post what level of discussion is permitted so that you don't have to waste your time deleting people's comments?

John, my wishlist is still taking over 2 minutes to load. Is there anyway I can avoid this?

mareofthesea: You have your "settings" set to show 1500 books at one time. That's *huge* and makes for a 2mb large web page. Unless you have a very fast connection and a fast computer, it's going to be slow.

Change your settings to show something smaller, like 100 books at a time, and your wishlist will be much faster.

Cool. But I think bookfinder.com is the best source I know of -- a search there will show both new and used prices, with shipping, from pretty much every online bookseller there is, including ABE and Amazon. BookFinder is a subsidiary of ABEbooks, which (as you know) is a subsidiary of Amazon, so you may be OK with it contractually.

Yes, bookfinder, as a totally-focussed-on-prices site, is always going to be better than BookMooch at finding the best price.

Unfortunately, I do not know if I can link to them or not. I asked my ABE Books partner representative for clarification about Amazon and whether he thought I could link to them or not. He usually answers my email promptly, but no response to that question.

After I clicked My Country for a second time it showed the copies that were available within Canada. This didn't irk me very much as it was easily solved with a second click, but today, it inexplicably will not show any copies within Canada, except when I click the button a second time, the Canadian copies will show up.

I did recently add a 24h cache to searches, so perhaps it's a bug on my part. However, I'm not exactly sure what you're doing, so I wasn't able to follow your steps to recreate it. Are you doing a "search" for "Lemony Snicket" or an advanced search, or something else? If you could paste in the URLs you're on, that would be helpful too.

I have the book "Streets for People: A Primer for Americans" on my wishlist. On my wishlist, it lists the Amazon price as $292.54. But if I click through to the detail page, it lists: Amazon prices: $3.85 used $292.54 new So shouldn't the wishlist show $3.85? Just wondering.

Yes, this looks wrong to me too. I'm investigating.

-john

When you censored hers and other comments, weren't you imposing your own decision on them because you didn't agree with what they were saying? If other users don't like somebody's comments they can always engage in the dialogue and choose to disagree.

My apologies to RidgewayGirl for erasing your message. I reacted emotionally and impulsively. I think what I objected to was what I perceived as a harsh, critical tone that I didn't feel was particularly friendly, polite or civil.

I think it's perhaps a bit too easy on the Internet to forget others emotional reactions to things.

I'd worked on this best-price feature full time for two weeks, and to see two of the first three comments be "I hate it, you should remove it" upset me, and I didn't feel that was a constructive way to voice your opinion. I shouldn't have erased the comments, so I apologize for that.

All I ask is that you be aware that I work really hard on BookMooch, that it's often hard to "do the right thing" and make everyone happy. Also, people who are happy with something are (it's the nature of forums) less likely to post than people who are unhappy. For example, redoing the inventory/wishlists pages was a ton of work (almost two months), and most of the early feedback was overwhelmingly negative. There was a lot of constructively negative feedback in there, which is why (over time) those pages shaped up and became decently usable.

I know someone else who ran another noncommercial site, and after 8 years her emotions took over, she said "too hell with you people, all you do is criticize me despite my hard unpaid work" and shut her site down. I don't think I'll ever feel that way, but it can be a natural emotional reaction to hearing negative and strongly worded feedback.

When you have something bad to say, try to realize that you're writing an unpaid volunteer who does this out of love and commitment to books and sharing.

-john

Also, in a backhanded compliment sort of way, I think one of the reasons why people feel so upset is because bookmooch means so much to them.

I'm cautiously optimistic about the new feature and regardless, we do appreciate all the hard work you do. Thank you so much!

> Also, people who are happy with something are (it's the
> nature of forums) less likely to post than people who are unhappy.

You are so right. I am a very happy BookMooch user and I have never posted. I read everything, I am very grateful, I want some day to have truckloads of money and throw them at you because BookMooch is brilliant and this is my first comment.

THANK YOU, JOHN!!!

Now back into the dark comfortable lurking place...

Many many thanks,
Sophie.

Hi John: From the above comments, it looks like this will be a very popular tool. Could you add some sort of opt-out feature under settings? Perhaps under the Preferred Amazon store dropdown, an option would be "none?" For me, this would really help keep BookMooch a community first, and marketplace second. Also, I'd like to keep dollar signs off of my wishlist page, though again, it looks like I'm in the minority. Thank you!

I never, ever said "I hate it, you should remove it" or "I don't think anyone else should be allowed to have this feature". You put both those statements in quotes and attributed them falsely to me.

It was unkind of you to word your post in such a way as to make me someone who was harshly criticizing your changes. I spoke my mind in a mild way and you took it as an extremely harsh attack, which it was not. You also misrepresented what I said in a public forum without letting others see my words so as to judge for themselves whether or not they were "friendly, polite and civil". I can understand over-reacting when you were tired, but you kind of threw me under the bus in your recent "apology". Which is fine. I'm a big girl and if this keeps others from making the mistake of honestly expressing themselves in a respectful and polite way, then I'm happy to spare them the discomfort of having words they did not say attributed to them.

I'm not planning on buying books on Amazon at the moment but I'm OK with the feature. If I were to list a very expensive book then I'd like to know beforehand. I also wanted to say that I like the new version of the wishlist very much.
Thanks John for everything!

I understand your discomfort, but the situation may have changed less than you think.

I suspect, but can't prove (except in my own case), that most of the people who're interested in selling the odd book on Amazon *already* check the market before they post something on BM, and that their high-value books would never have made it into their BM inventory in the first place, even without the new feature.

I also suspect, but again can't prove, that most of the BM folks who *don't* sell the odd book on Amazon have made that choice consciously -- either as a matter of principle, or because (per John, many messages ago) it isn't worth the hassle for books worth less than (say $20).

If those assumptions are true, then the pool of people who're going to look at the new feature and think "Holy cow! I can get $$ for this!" is pretty small [and will drop off *fast* when they realize that the prices are edition-specific, and another edition of that same book is listed on Amazon for $5.00 . . . :-)]

Just a thought . . . and as a child of the early seventies, I absolutely get that it doesn't address your underlying, philosophical discomfort.

I think John has been very dedicated in making improvements to BookMooch and working on a voluntary basis. And it is now the best online book-exchange site available. The Amazon prices are very informative and do give us a choice to buy if we can't wait to mooch. These are all positives. John, I sincerely hope you never ditch BookMooch - the naysayers are fewer than the supporters - and in fact, many of the supporters of BookMooch don't come to post on the forums - they are the silent majority. We are all so grateful that you can facilitate our sharing of books and create a BookMooch community at the same time. I have made new friends through BookMooch, and it has been such a positive thing in all our lives.

Lesley
Ratsfarm

I never, ever said "I hate it, you should remove it" or "I don't think anyone else should be allowed to have this feature". You put both those statements in quotes and attributed them falsely to me.

I apologize for that --- as I mentioned in a comment above, I reacted emotionally and impulsively. Honestly, I really don't remember what you actually wrote, other than (at the time) I was upset by the comments and it's very possible that I later misattributed my response as being caused by your comment, when actually it was someone else. Don't know, again my apologies, and are you ok with leaving it at that?

-john

John, could you do what Allie asked? I LOVE the idea of an opt-out on this feature. Look, I'm new here and it's been a lovely place to well, so far, get rid of a lot of items and I've felt welcome and indeed welcomed. But I live in the city where Amazon lurks, and I am not a fan. If I BUY I try to use say, Powell's, or another bookstore because Amazon's got policies I really find distasteful and that hurt booksellers.

As another commentator mentioned, there is an "opt-out" by choosing "Hide Amazon prices" on the pulldown menu.

Also, good news, I heard from ABE Books this morning, and their opinion is that I can use their price engine as well, and he explained how their legalese (which is similar to Amazons) means something different than I thought it did.

So...other price engines might be forthcoming. But, for now, I've moved on and am working on the "meet and mooch" feature.

-john

Again, love the feature and I have no desire to turn it off, but I hate to see bad actors rewarded like that.

Anyways, thanks again for all your efforts.

I now have 31 books on my wishlist that don't show an Amazon price at all. If you click through to the detail, no prices are listed, but if you then click on the Amazon link, you will see that there are some available.

Yesterday, Amazon told the BM server that we had asked more 2000 requests in an hour, and stopped accepting any price lookups. Unfortunately, each time BM checked to see if "is now ok?" this counted as a request, so for a good amount of yesterday, no new prices were being looked up.

I temporarily fixed that problem yesterday, so that BM waits a bit before re-asking Amazon. I have a bit more work to do on that fix today, and then your prices (on those 31 books) should start appearing again.

-john

Could we have some information on how many books have been purchased through links to Amazon since this feature was introduced? Or if this isn't available, some statistics on BM revenue from Amazon, not necessarily $ amounts.

The "best price" feature has only been widely available since recently, and so far this month, there is $260 worth of Amazon commissions going to BM. Extrapolating to a complete month, that's $750 for the complete month. I've previously seen about $600/month, so this is a slight increase.

Expenses: I recently put in two hardware upgrades to BookMooch. One was a much bigger "ssd" hard drive (it's all memory, and so very fast) for about $800, and also a 2 TB traditional drive for about $400 (which will store book cover images).

I paid for those out of BM's account, which is fed entirely by donations and the money from Amazon's affiliate plan. Without that money, I wouldn't be able to buy hardware as new needs arise, so this revenue, though modest, is really very welcome.

Also, I have a helper who lives near the server hosting company, who I pay hourly to install operating systems, upgrade hardware, etc. It took him about 15 hours to install both those drives, because he had to reinstall the operating system, reconfigure the machine to make it work and then restore the configuration from backup. He makes $30/hour and so he was another $450.

Bandwidth costs $200/month, so in the past month I spent about $2000. From those numbers, you can see that BM runs pretty close to the bone, money wise.

Yes, BookMooch does cost money to run, and money to improve it too, and while I don't get paid, some people who help make it all work, do need to be paid.

-john

Do we need a better gentle reminder that if we do order from Amazon, then doing so via a click from BM will help BM's funding. There must be many $ worth of commission being lost because we go away and think about a wishlisted book, then open up a new browser tab and go and buy it, rather than going through BM.

I hate pop-ups, but every little helps.

I hope you're able to work on adding other resellers too, as secondhand deals elsewhere are often more interesting.

If you dn't get a book right away go anywhere but amazon.

v.

I do appreciate the point about Amazon stomping all over independent stores (and not just the bookshops); it's for that reason that I rarely buy from them myself. However: a) a lot of us follow Amazon links not to buy a book necessarily, but to access information about it (I'm often curious about the cover, the author-biography, and - especially - the full publishers' reviews when available); and b) as mentioned, whether or not we actually purchase a book, following a link out of BookMooch to Amazon gives a little bit of financial support from Amazon to the site, so the fact that the Amazon links are now much more prominent means that allowing for an ongoing series of little donations to the site is nearly effortless.

Thanks for giving us an estimate of the amount Amazon may put into BM through the links. Can you clarify? Do they make a percentage donation only on purchases made, or also, as someone suggested, on just using the link to access info? Do they also make a donation if people use the link to list and sell books?

I don't have precise answers to your question, but from the reports they give me, it appears that Amazon:
1) pays their highest commission when you buy the book you clicked on from BM
2) pays a lower commission on anything you buy after clicking to Amazon from BM
3) does not pay a commission on books you sell on Amazon.

-john

In order to make Bookmooch workable for University texts it needs to be timely - No point in getting a text after the course is finished. I wonder about a way of adding a feature to express post the book at the requester's cost.

Can anyone think of a way to do this that doesn't reveal third party billing info or someone's purolator account?