Any Bookseller can apply to join Bookzangle in any of three categories: GOLD (available shortly), SILVER or BRONZE (both available now).
A Bronze Member can upgrade to Silver or Gold level at any time, as can a Silver Member to Gold.
Booksellers applying to join Bookzangle must adhere to a minimum set of quality listing standards prior to being accepted. Those minimum standards are summarised on the Member Requirements page.
A BRONZE Member pays a 6-monthy fee of AUD$60 (AUD$10/month) to join the site and thereafter can list books and pictures with us (maximum 50,000). All site sales are commission free. Bronze Members enjoy numerous free Bookzangle software tools and benefits as per the Schedule below.
A SILVER Member pays an annual fee of AUD$360 (AUD$30/month) to list his/her books and pictures for commission-free sales (up to 100,000 listings). Silver Members enjoy an extra range of sophisticated free-to-use bookselling software benefits as part of the all-inclusive package.
A GOLD Member (under development) will pay a higher annual fee in return for unlimited listings and pictures, all the ordinary software benefits enjoyed by Bronze and Silver Members plus direct API upload access to both eBay and Amazon (when completed, currently under construction).
If you are considering applying to join the site as a bookseller, please also peruse the further notes regarding other conditions of membership underneath the table below.
For a detailed description of each of the software tools/benefits listed below, click on the highlighted header of each benefit category for the relevant pop-up text box to appear, or else see the detailed list of member benefits
Product | Bronze Member | Silver Member | Gold Member |
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Base Package Fee (6-monthly) | AUD$60 | AUD$180 | $TBA |
List Books & pictures at site | 50,000 listings | 100,000 listings | Unlimited listings |
Our Bookzangle site has grown out of the former World Book Market (WBM) bookseller co-operative website, and is steadily growing in size and customer sales. After eight years of WBM operation, the site has built a core of loyal and dedicated buyers, primarily in the upper market range (books $50-$150+), and many of these have become repeat customers. Bookzangle is a quality-conscious, professional bookselling site, and does not accept listings from volume re-listers, page-hoggers and other such site-degenerating bookselling types. Bookzangle will automatically read and translate upload files from most common bookseller databases, including Homebase (all versions), Booktrakker, Bookhound, user-customised tab-delimited files from any source, and the former WBM-BB (now Bookzangle-DB). The Bookzangle website has a secure credit card module (fully PCI compliant) at which customers can leave their credit card details for forwarding to the Members selling their books at the site. The site boasts some very sophisticated and advanced search routines, such as automatically finding "Mac" when "Mc" is entered, and allowing any combination of apostrophe to be entered by either seller or customer and still returning a "hit" (so that a search for Obrians will still find and deliver O'Brian's and OBrian's and O'Brians', and so on). The site also possesses a very effective and easy-to-drive Variable Shipping Weight matrix, permitting Members to set different shipping rates for different customer countries and for different weights of book. Up to 6 weight ranges and 6 local and international geographic zones are catered for. The site allows Members to post up to 9 pictures per book. Each of these extra pictures may carry a text caption set by the Member. Links can then be created to that Gallery of pictures and captions which can be inserted into emails to customers, or displayed at other sites where this is permitted (e.g. at one's private website). |
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Free picture hosting for all your other sites | Y | Y | Y |
Silver and Gold Members at Bookzangle can use our site for ALL their picture hosting accessed by other sites, including eBay, and this is done at no extra charge to Members using us for this purpose. Some booksellers are currently paying other commercial hosting sites monthly sums for storing "extra" pictures for use at other sites, and in some cases these payments are nearly as great as the entire annual cost of a SIlver Bookzangle Membership! By combining the use of our sophisticated Picture Management and Audit Tools with the use of Bookzangle as your primary pic hosting site (which all other sites are then directed to access to display your pictures) you can create a complete and powerful audit trail over all your pictures, and not be obliged to pay out extra fees for the privilege. |
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Books Auto-Forward to Foreign Sites | Up to 6 | Up to 50 | Up to 50 |
No more painstaking and time-consuming uploads to book site after book site in succession - a site Member has only to upload his or her listings once (to Bookzangle). Our file-server will thereafter forward that file to nearly every other site a Member lists on within the hour. This auto-forwarding software tool operates equally for books and for accompanying pictures. All such onloads/forwards are logged and viewable by the Member, and if the receiving site has a problem with its FTP protocols (or is down for any reason) the member will be immediately advised of that forwarding failure. A Bookzangle Member has a configurable Dashboard in which he or she sets all the FTP addresses, passwords etc required for this exercise, and once set, that configuration area requires no further attention. Sites can be set for Book Listings Only, for Pictures Only or for both Books and pictures. Sites such as Chrislands require two separate FTP addresses configured - one for books data and one for pictures. Our Dashboard caters for this. Sites can be marked as Active or Inactive at any time in the Dashboard, so you can turn automated forwarding OFF or ON for any site as you wish, and when you wish. When you add a new listing site to your list of sites, you simply configure a new site protocol on your Dashboard and thereafter it will be included in the automated forwarding procedure. There ARE some restrictions to this procedure: Amazon must still be attended separately (just as at present with Homebase), and some micro-sites (not many now) still will not accept FTP protocols on upload (UK Bookworld is one such site). Since our forwarding system is built around an automated FTP upload routine, these small sites remain excluded from our system. Today nearly all sites accept FTP uploads, however, and in most cases a Member will be able to service the vast majority of his or her sites with this automated tool. |
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Picture Auto-Forward to Foreign Sites | Up to 6 | Up to 50 | Up to 50 |
This works much the same as the automated book-listings data forwarding tool, but with all your pictures. These will be forwarded to all those sites you have configured to receive pictures in your Bookzangle Member Dashboard. Just as with your book listings, a Bookzangle Member uploads pictures - either a few recent ones, or a large bulk all at once - just the once (to Bookzangle) and our file-server then passes these on to all your other listing sites which take pictures directly. You can also use your cache of pictures at Bookzangle to act as the main Silo or Control Store of all your pictures, and send the URL for these to those sites which permit of picture display with foreign hosting (e.g. Antiqbook, Booksandcollectibles). If you have a great many pictures, this will actually save you money at some sites (e.g. Chrislands) which charge an extra fee for pictures uploaded directly to them over a certain quantity or overall data storage size. |
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Free Bookzangle-DB bookseller database (Freeware) | Y | Y | Y |
The Bookzangle-DB Bookseller Database comes in two versions: a Freeware Version which may be downloaded and used without charge or fee by any Member (Bronze or otherwise); and a Full Member Version (Silver and Gold Members) which has significantly greater power and capacity than its Freeware cousin. The Freeware version has an extensive Operator's Manual, but is not otherwise supplied with technical support or regular upgrades. The Full Member Version provided free of extra charge to Silver and Gold Members is updated and improved regularly, with automated tools supplied to upgrade existing data from older versions into the new. Full technical support is also provided to Silver and Gold Members for this version of the software. Booksellers using our database are loud in its praises, and consider it second-to-none as a multi-site book sales maximisation tool. This is primarily because it is a bookseller-designed piece of software, designed to maximise your sales at all your selling sites, including Amazon (for which it has special routines on board to enlarge and enrich your exposure and sales there). Bookzangle-DB is extremely easy to use and drive, and is designed to deliver top-class power to a bookseller who is not necessarily a technical guru. It uses very easy-to-navigate menus and pages, and is intuitive in its operation. Unlike Homebase and similar databases, Bookzangle-DB is unrestricted in its power of Find Records, and Search and Replace of data across multiple fields. You can isolate any category or group amongst your listings and then perform data changes across any of the fields very quickly and efficiently. Bookzangle-DB is "menu driven" meaning that most of the fields for Publisher, Binding, Category, Edition, Condition, Spine State, Previous Owner Marks, Signed by Author, Extended Dust-jacket Condition, Previous Owner Inscriptions and many similar fields are all driven by a set of drop-down menu lists which you can swiftly select with the mouse, and which you can add to or edit as you please. The database comes supplied with some 500 bookseller-designed, preset phrases and useful tags across all these fields, which you can use "as is" or change as you wish. The database contains what we consider to be the most advanced routines available for uploading books to Amazon. Our system employs user-manipulable tab-delimited export formats where the user can blend various different approaches globally and per listing to achieve a genuine 100% success rating at that most (technically) difficult of listing sites. Bookzangle-DB has a full Spellchecker on every field; can print out typeset-style Print Catalogues (plain paper or to text files for email) of all or selected groupings of listings; will generate automatically prepared invoices to customers with full listing details inserted; can generate automated emails to customers with full book details and headers and footers of the user's choice automatically inserted, and many similar or related features. The database comes with its own advanced error checking facilities and tools, so that a "wrong" ISBN entered will instantly flash an error warning onto screen, and there are special buttons for you to find and display all or any records which are missing data in crucial fields such as Edition, Publisher, Binding, Category and other key fields which ideally should all be populated for maximum effect of listings at sites like Abebooks. Bookzangle-DB comes with a number of preset Print List formats (including one which generates a list of Cost vs Retail price and a complete Inventory Check with $ and % values. There are also inbuilt and automated Sort routines so you can sort your listings alphabetically by author/title or by price or by any other chosen field before printing a List or a Print Catalogue. All in all, our Bookzangle-DB is very much a Rolls Royce of bookseller inventory management and data uploading systems, and is designed to interface with our Bookzangle file-server in a number of important ways to generate various audit and cross-checking results and reports, which are detailed elsewhere in this list of benefits for Members. |
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Auto-check on ISBNS each upload | Y | Y | Y |
Upon every upload to Bookzangle an Error and Warnings report is generated by email back to the Member, which lists any critical errors received (e.g. missing or zero price field), but which also contains a detailed list of any ISBN numbers uploaded which are either clearly wrong, or which have failed our ISBN validation software test (which is automatically applied to each book uploaded to Bookzangle). You may have uploaded an ISBN with 11, 12 or 14 digits, which clearly will be typo or entry errors at your end, or you may have uploaded books with an ISBN which simply does not validate under the logical rules applied to ISBNs. Sometimes these will in fact be simple publisher printing or other errors, but you will be advised nevertheless, and can go verify from the original book, or from other sources. Similarly, if you have uploaded a book which your database declares was published in 1924, or 1962, and yet have included an ISBN, Bookzangle file-server will send you back an ISBN Warning on that book for you to investigate. In such an instance you have got either the year of publication or the presence of an ISBN wrong, and can correct that error. The Bookzangle server will also warn you if you have entered a nonsense date accidentally in Year of Publication field e.g. 2040, or 19877. Swift correction of these and all other errors (and a double check on the ISBNs uploaded) will permit you to make quick changes to offending listings, and re-upload any such for instant transmission via our auto-onload system to all your other listing sites simultaneous with correcting your listings at Bookzangle. |
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Error checks on uploads: missing fields etc. | Y | Y | Y |
In addition to error reports emailed back to you on ech upload (wrong ISBN, Price Field empty or at zero etc) the Bookzangle Member Dashboard provides a host of crucial likely-error data, which can be accessed and actioned at any time. This enables you to significantly improve your listings' hit-rate in Advanced Searches - not just at the Bookzangle site but at all other sites to which we forward your books under the Auto-Forward tool. For instance, your Bookzangle Dashboard will tell you how many books you have uploaded to us which are missing a Binding, Edition or Publisher field - omissions which can and do cost you important sales at other sites. Clicking on the offending category will deliver a print-list to screen of all those deficient or faulty listings, and you can then easily correct those errors or omissions and re-submit your more complete listings to all your sites. The Dashboard will also inform you which of your listings have, or do not have, pictures attached, and which have multiple pictures uploaded by you, again with optional print-lists provided. A further handy little tool on your Dashboard is a Value Calculator, in which you can select your chosen ranges of book prices on your listings, and have a report delivered on-screen which tells you how many books you have in each value range ($10-$20, say), the gross sales value of that range, and its percentage standing vs your overall gross sale value. |
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Multiple pictures display: 9 pictures per book & captions | Y | Y | Y |
Bookzangle Members can upload up to 9 pictures per listing to our selling site, and these will all display there at the main site and on a special Gallery Page. Members using our Bookzangle-DB (Freeware or Full Member Version alike) can even add a separate text caption or tag to each of these ten online pictures displayed in the Gallery for that listing. Bookzangle Members use this sophisticated addition to our selling site options both for better display of their products there, but also to create a form of Window Display for their more expensive books which can then be referenced via links in emails sent to customers, or placed on their own private websites (which usually lack this multi-display capacity) and in other relevant places. The multiple pictures do not have to be laboriously loaded manually against each listing, but can be bulk uploaded under a special, preset filename convention along with all other pictures uploaded in bulk. Our file-server will recognise all these, and automatically create the multi-picture gallery display upon receipt of the extra pictures. We use the same file-naming convention for multiple pictures as is recognised at Abebooks and Biblio.com, so those already using multiple pictures at those sites can simply upload their existing .jpg extra-picture files without changing filenames. Members using our Bookzangle-DB have the additional inbuilt tool of having the direct link to this 9-picture display automatically inserted in the text block of all emails generated from the database to customers, so that a customer in receipt of that email has merely to click on the supplied link, and the full gallery of up to nine pictures and captions attached will display instantly on his or her screen. |
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Bookseller Trade Support Forum | Y | Y | Y |
The Bookzangle site has grown out of the former Bookseller Co-operative site, the World Book Market (WBM) which operated for eight years until its closure in 2012. During its former tenure, the WBM Member Forum became one of the most lively and helpful bookseller resources currently available on the Internet. Bookzangle will continue that important bookseller-fuelled resource and will be extending the trade support components of its Member Forum substantially over what went before. Bronze, Silver and Gold members will all be given equal access to the Bookzangle Trade Support Forum, except for some specific tech support sections on tools and facilities only available to Silver and Gold members. The Bookzangle Forum contains a wide array of different bookselling-related sections, and many of the discussions there amongst informed and experienced bookseller-members will be found of enormous benefit to new Members joining the site. The Forum also acts as the hub of our technical support mechanisms, and contains many detailed Help Threads relating to operations of the Bookzangle site, and advice as to how best to take advantage of the many Bookzangle bookseller software tools available to members of all three levels. The Forum is for Bookzangle Members only, and is not open to the public, or to booksellers who are not Members at Bronze level or upwards. |
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Listings Recovery Tools (after data crash etc) | Y | Y | Y |
A backload from Bookzangle file-server to Bookzangle Member can be ordered at any time, either of books listings data, or of all pictures stored at Bookzangle, or both. A Member might order either or both in the event of a local or total hard disk failure or other computer crash or disaster (such as theft). In the case of our Bookzangle-DB users, the backload of data ordered will provide absolutely every scrap of data stored in any field whatsoever on the original Bookzangle-DB, including Private notes, all five Categories, Location, Invoice Data, stored customer email data, and everything else. Importantly, and unlike backloads of data from most other sites, a backload of data from Bookzangle will include all records previously uploaded to us which have since been marked as SOLD. In the case of members still using Homebase or Booktrakker or other databases, then the backload of data will be as comprehensive and complete as those other packages permit in their preset export data routines. For Homebase users, this will deliver significantly greater data accuracy and completeness than is available from Abebooks currently on any data backload ordered from that site, which drops a good many critical fields altogether, and concatenates other crucial fields which should be separated into the component parts for efficiency of use after restoring the database. |
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Free top-level Technical and IT support | Y | Y | Y |
Bookzangle has a dedicated and highly skilled staff of programmers and other technically-literate folk who provide a constant stream of technical support and advice to Silver+ members via the Technical SUpport sections of our Forum, both on Bookzangle-related software issues and on a wide range of ordinary IT matters, virus protection, firewalls, different browsers and their quirks etc. In addition, technical problems and queries raised at our Members' Forum are frequently dealt with at length and in detail by other members who may have encountered similar headaches or difficulties in the past. When you join Bookzangle you gain instant access to a sophisticated and extremely knowledgeable HelpDesk team of both staff and other Members which will be able to helpfully deal with most of your technical glitches, crashes, simple voodoo and other problems of a technical nature. This sophisticated Technical Support service is considered by many Silver+ Members to be worth the annual cost of membership on its lonesome. |
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Commission-free book sales at website | Y | Y | Y |
All Members enjoy commission-free sales all year at the Bookzangle sales website, making Bookzangle the perfect (totally cost-free) site to which to refer customers enquiring how they might best order and pay for books they wish to order from you. Bookzangle is fully PCI compliant with its Secure Credit Card server arrangements, and buyers can confidently enter their card details at the site which are then relayed on to the Member concerned for processing. Our Bookzangle site has grown from the former World Book Market (WBM) bookseller co-operative website, and is steadily growing in size and customer sales. After eight years of WBM operation, the site has built a core of loyal and dedicated buyers, primarily in the upper market range (books $50-$150+), and many of these have become repeat customers. Bookzangle is a quality-conscious, professional bookselling site, and does not accept listings from volume re-listers, page-hoggers and other such site-degenerative types. Bookzangle will automatically read and translate upload files from most common bookseller databases, including Homebase (all versions), Booktrakker, Bookhound, user-customised tab-delimited files from any source, and the former WBM-BB (now Bookzangle-DB). The site boasts some very sophisticated and advanced search routines, such as automatically finding "Mac" when "Mc" is entered, and allowing any combination of apostrophe to be entered by either seller or customer and still returning a "hit" (so that a search for Obrians will still find O'Brian's and OBrian's and O'Brians', and so on). The site also possesses a very effective and easy-to-drive Variable Shipping Weight matrix, permitting Members to set different shipping rates for different customer countries and for different weights of book. Up to 6 weight ranges and 6 local and international geographic zones are catered for. The site allows Members to post up to 9 pictures per book. Each of these extra pictures may carry a text caption set by the Member. Links can then be created to that Gallery of pictures and captions which can be inserted into emails to customers, or displayed at other sites where this is permitted (e.g. at one's private website). Some Members elect to have their private websites display all other Members' listings along with their own. Thus, when you upload books to Bookzangle they instantly display on many other Member websites around the world. Many extra sales come from this cross-fertilisation of private websites. |
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Full Version Bookseller Database (incl. upgrades & tech support) | N | Y | Y |
The Bookzangle-DB Bookseller Database comes in two versions: a Freeware Version which may be downloaded and used without charge or fee by any Member (Bronze or otherwise); and a Full Member Version (Silver and Gold Members) which has significantly greater power and capacity than its Freeware cousin. The Freeware version has an extensive Operator's Manual, but is not otherwise supplied with technical support or regular upgrades. The Full Member Version provided free of extra charge to Silver and Gold Members is updated and improved regularly, with automated tools supplied to upgrade existing data from older versions into the new. Full technical support is also provided to Silver and Gold Members for this version of the software. Booksellers using our database are loud in its praises, and consider it second-to-none as a multi-site book sales maximisation tool. This is primarily because it is a bookseller-designed piece of software, designed to maximise your sales at all your selling sites, including Amazon (for which it has special routines on board to enlarge and enrich your exposure and sales there). It is extremely easy to use and drive, and is designed to deliver top-class power to a bookseller who is not necessarily a technical guru. It uses very easy-to-navigate menus and pages, and is intuitive in its operation. Unlike Homebase and similar databases, Bookzangle-DB is unrestricted in its power of Find Records, and Search and Replace of data across multiple fields. You can isolate any category or group amongst your listings and then perform data changes across any of the fields very quickly and efficiently. Bookzangle-DB is "menu driven" meaning that most of the fields for Publisher, Binding, Category, Edition, Condition, Spine State, Previous Owner Marks, Signed by Author, Extended Dust-jacket Condition, Previous Owner Inscriptions and many similar fields are all driven by a set of drop-down menu lists which you can select with the mouse, and which you can add to or edit as you please. The database comes supplied with some 500 bookseller-designed, preset phrases and useful tags across all these fields, which you can use "as is" or change as you wish. The database contains what we consider to be the most advanced routines available for uploading books to Amazon. Our system employs user-manipulable tab-delimited export formats where the user can blend various different approaches globally and per listing to achieve a genuine 100% success rating at that most (technically) difficult of listing sites. Bookzangle-DB has a full Spellchecker on every field; can print out typeset-style Print Catalogues (plain paper or to text files for email) of all or selected groupings of listings; will generate automatically prepared invoices to customers with full listing details inserted; can generate automated emails to customers with full book details and headers and footers of the user's choice automatically inserted, and many similar or related features. The database comes with its own advanced error checking facilities and tools, so that a "wrong" ISBN entered will instantly flash an error warning onto screen, and there are special buttons for you to find and display all or any records which are missing data in crucial fields such as Edition, Publisher, Binding, Category and other key fields which ideally should all be populated for maximum effect of listings at sites like Abebooks. Bookzangle-DB comes with a number of preset Print List formats (including one which generates a list of Cost vs Retail price and a complete Inventory Check with $ and % values. There are also inbuilt and automated Sort routines so you can sort your listings alphabetically by author/title or by price or by any other chosen field before printing a List or a Print Catalogue. All in all, our Bookzangle-DB is very much a Rolls Royce of bookseller inventory management and data uploading systems, and is designed to interface with our Bookzangle file-server in a number of important ways to generate various audit and cross-checking results and reports, which are detailed elsewhere in this list of benefits for Members. |
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Auto-Forwarding of listings and Pictures | N | Y | Y |
Silver and Gold Members can use the Bookzangle auto-forwarding software tools to on-send each upload of book pictures listings to as many sites as they wish. One Member currently uses our software to upload simultaneously to more than 40 different bookselling sites! No more painstaking and time-consuming uploads to book site after book site in succession - a site Member has only to upload his or her listings once (to Bookzangle). Our file-server will thereafter forward that file to every site a Member lists on within the hour. This auto-forwarding software tool operates equally for books and for the accompanying pictures. All such onloads/forwards are logged and viewable by the Member, and if the receiving site has a problem with its FTP protocols (or is down for any reason) the member will be immediately advised of that forwarding failure. A Bookzangle Member has a configurable Dashboard in which he or she sets all the FTP addresses, passwords etc required for this exercise, and once set, that configuration area requires no further attention. Sites can be set for Book Listings Only, for Pictures Only or for both Books and pictures. Sites such as Chrislands require two separate FTP addresses configured - one for books data and one for pictures. Our Dashboard caters for this. Sites can be marked as Active or Inactive at any time in the Dashboard, so you can turn automated forwarding OFF or ON for any site as you wish, and when you wish. When you add a new listing site to your list of sites, you simply configure a new site protocol on your Dashboard and thereafter it will be included in the automated forwarding procedure. There ARE some restrictions to this procedure: Amazon must still be attended separately (just as at present with Homebase), and some micro-sites (not many now) still will not accept FTP protocols on upload (UK Bookworld is one such site). Since our forwarding system is built around an automated FTP upload routine, these small sites remain excluded from our system. Today nearly all sites accept FTP, however, and in most cases a Member will be able to service the vast majority of his or her sites with this automated tool. |
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Variable Data Forwarding | N | Y | Y |
Very much one of the "jewels in Bookzangle crown", this tool follows the same onload/forwarding procedures as detailed in the Auto-onload section described elsewhere, but permits a wonderful array of VARIABLE data to be forwarded to each site in turn (as set by the member on his or her Variable Data Forwarding Dashboard). Thus you can set different prices by % or $ value (up or down) across all your listings at a certain site or sites; or you can specify greater or lesser prices for this or that site based on your coded WEIGHT uploaded to Bookzangle per listings; or you can exclude certain categories of books from selected sites; or you can add separate text tags to be attached to all your listings at this or that site, or selected sites, but not at others. As an example, you could direct our file-server to change each of your uploads so that all books over $100 in price were EXCLUDED from Abebooks and Alibris, but included in uploads to all other sites. Or you can select a particular site (your own website, for example) and use the Variable Data Forward tool to automatically reduce ALL your prices at that preferential site by 5% or 10%, reflecting your lack of or lesser fees and commissions at the nominated site. Or you could request that all books marked over 1 kilo in weight (at your database) have an extra $5 added to the sale price at Abebooks (but not at Alibris). And so on, in like manner across the whole range of your sites configured by you for auto-forwarding/onloads on every upload to Bookzangle. Once you have set your Dashboard to the site-configuration you want, you need do nothing more on each upload until or unless you wish to cancel or change the variable data being sent. Our file-server makes all the changes for each site automatically, before passing the variable data from each upload on to the site(s) concerned. Members are currently using this sophisticated tool to drive a wide array of variable prices and text tags and exclusions/inclusions across all their listing sites, and its use enables a member to tailor-make all aspects of listings to the maximum advantage at all their listing sites (including their own websites, or their Chrislands site etc). There is no question that this important software tool has the capacity, if creatively used, to enlarge and enhance sales opportunities at many of your other bookselling sites. |
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Sophisticated Picture Proofing Systems | N | Y | Y |
An exciting and extremely useful online bookseller tool from Bookzangle, which is an important and highly useful software routine for all those including pictures with their books at multiple sites. Bookzangle Members can select a "picture proofing" option on their Member Dashboard which will display all their pictures, or a selected date range of them (e.g. pictures uploaded in last month, or week), and this will display alongside each picture some brief book bibliographic data as listed at Bookzangle: Author, Title, Serial Number and the date the picture was uploaded to our server. These can then be quickly scrolled and viewed for accuracy and quality, and marked either singly or per page of 50 as Proofed OK after which such marking those pictures will not again be presented during any future proofing process. Once a Member has performed the task of proofing and marking ok (or correcting) all the existing cache of pictures stored (which can be done in chunks or small bites over a period of time if a Member so wishes), then future picture proofreads will only concern book pictures newly uploaded, which in most cases will be manageable in a short timeframe as a weekly or other periodic chore. Where a picture displayed is clearly the wrong book, or where it is upside down, or not cropped properly, or has some other flaw or fault, the Member can check the box alongside called "Delete Picture" and this will instantly send to Bookzangle (and to all other sites configured for auto-forwarding of pictures) a special "dummy" .jpg picture under the item's Serial ID. This "dummy" picture is a whited-out upright rectangle box with the words "picture Temporarily Offline" within that box. This will instantly remove the wrong or faulty picture from the attached listing at all such sites, allowing the member to re-do and re-upload that picture at his or her later leisure. The re-uploaded picture will then, of course, replace the temporary "dummy" previously sent to all listing sites. Bookzangle Members can order reports from Bookzangle server which will keep them fully posted as to which of their book listings at Bookzangle server have pictures attached, and which do not. These reports are delivered back to the Member by way of an instant-return email, in plain text format, so the member can (if required) load such data into a spreadsheet or other application and massage or manipulate it there. Or they can print out the list of books missing pictures and then go find the culprits and get their pictures online. Members using Bookzangle as a form of Control Cache for both pictures and listings, and auto-forwarding both to all their listing sites, can therefore establish which pictures are likely missing at ALL their listing sites, and upload or re-upload these to Bookzangle and hence on to all their other sites automatically. |
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Advanced Picture Auditing & other site checks | N | Y | Y |
The Advanced Picture Audit at Bookzangle site depends upon Members marking books which have been scanned or otherwise had a picture attached as "Scanned" in their database, which information is then tagged by our server. n picture-specific URL is thereby created and automatically sent to sites such as Antiqbook looking for a valid URL to action and display for foreign hosted books. Once a member has done this at their database end (which can be done in Homebase and other databases, and is not confined to our own Bookzangle-DB) then a report can be obtained from the Bookzangle server which will list all those books which are marked "Scanned" in the member's database but which do NOT have a picture stored at Bookzangle, and vice versa. The regular use of this tool will assist a member to make sure that his/her pictures are all correctly marked in his database (when they are present) and will save a multitude of broken links at sites like Antiqbook and others where the member is using Bookzangle picture cache as his or her primary source for foreign hosting. Using this advanced picture audit tool, Members can also quickly send off to Abebooks or other sites any pictures which SHOULD be there but for whatever reason are not. They will be able to instruct our server to do this for them with any uncorrelated pictures as per the advanced audit report, or they can do it manually themselves. |
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Auto-watermarking Pictures | N | Y | Y |
This automated tool permits Bookzangle Members to set a command on their Dashboard instructing our file-server to automatically watermark all pictures uploaded, either with a simple store name or with store name plus copyright symbol (recommended). The unwatermarked pictures uploaded are then stamped with the symbol(s) and text chosen by the Member before being placed on the Bookzangle site and before on-forwarding to all other Member sites set to pictures Forwarding by Bookzangle. Stamping each pic uploaded with store name and copyright symbol serves several purposes. It inhibits the outright theft of one's valuable scans and pictures by other, unscrupulous booksellers. More importantly, it stamps one's own store name on the pic which can be a profound extra store-promotional tool, particularly at those sites which either suppress or only grudgingly permit your unique store name to appear on your listings there. The Bookzangle system is exremely simply to set up and once that is done all your uploaded pictures will automatically show copyright symbol and your store name stamped neatly at the bottom of each pic on all sites you have set for pic forwarding at Bookzangle. |
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Other site listings checkers: Azon, Abe etc. | N | Y | Y |
This important tool operates for Amazon (all sites), Abebooks, Biblio and Alibris at present. It will instantly identify any "ghost" or duplicate listings at the Abebooks or other site, and will also identify any books which SHOULD be at that site, but which for whatever reason are not. Its operation is extremely simple. A member simply orders a backload of data from the site needing to be checked, and then passes that file directly onto our server as if uploading it as an upload file. Our server automatically recognises that file for what it is, and performs a detailed cross-check between the listings/serial numbers it contains, and those stored at the Bookzangle site. A report is then sent back to the Member by return email which lists all those books which appear in duplicate Serial Number form at the Abebooks or other site (if any - yes, this DOES happen occasionally, and is the explanation for the claims of "ghost" listings there!), and will also detail all those books, if any, which are listed at Bookzangle site but NOT at the site being checked, and vice-versa. Having run this routine a member can then go to the Amazon/Abebooks/Biblio/ALibris site and manually fix any offending or duplicated listings, or can gather up within his or her database any books reported missing at Abebooks and re-upload them in the ordinary fashion, either directly to that site or via the automated upload procedures at Bookzangle. |
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eBay direct bulk listings feed | N | N | Y |
This feature is currently being developed and will be available only to Gold Members once it becomes available. Further details about this feature will be provided when it is released. Basically, however, this feature will allow a Gold Member to upload his/her entire inventory or daily/weekly uploads or portions of it in fully automated fashion to eBay. It is anticipated that a Member will need the equivalent of a Storefront account in order to use this feature. |
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Amazon API direct data forward | N | N | Y |
This feature is currently being developed and will be available only to Gold Members once it becomes available. Further details about this feature will be provided when it is released. Basically, however, this feature will allow a Gold Member to upload his/her entire inventory or daily/weekly uploads or portions of it in fully automated fashion to Amazon. It is anticipated that a Member will need the equivalent of a Pro-Merchant account in order for to use this feature. |