Dropped from ABE's Half.com program
Archive: Online bookselling
ABE kicked us out of their Half.com program today. The program allows folks like us who don’t list on Half.com (too many bottom feeders) to have our ABE listings automatically added to Half.com.
Our fulfillment rate had dropped to 77%. Not really sure why. Possibly some of the failed sales were for recent books that sold elsewhere first. There’s probably a lag between our inventor change uploads to ABE and the book showing up on Half.com.
Since I don’t think the program ever brought us as much as $100 in the best month we won’t be missing it deeply.
I’ve bought exactly one book from Half.com myself. It was a book on male erotic massage.
Feel free to share your feelings about Dropped from ABE's Half.com program. Please stick to the theme of the entry. Disagreement is fine. Homophobia, racism, and kindred expressions of hatred will be deleted.
This site is one of my hobbies. I genuinely enjoy hearing from people and hate moderating or killing comments. Forthright disagreement is fine as long as it is civil.
My thanks,
Richard
1 · Posted by: cmoorecole on January 16, 2004 01:25 AM
I so appreciate your perspective on the way folks regard people who serve (in any capacity). I agree with you. It really rubs me raw to think about how ingratiating I have to be - offering refunds and “satisfaction guaranteed” in order to avoid negative feedback on bookselling venues.
which reminds me - since when does ABE have anything to do with half.com? I know I seem very nit-picky, but eBay has owned half.com for at least a year. Prior to that it was owned by a little town in Eastern Oregon that actually changed its name to Half.com. It was the town industry. For awhile they were like a willing sister site with eBay and then the big e bought them out. This past year eBay began to get serious about a transition to absorb half.com and close it down. They're really pushing half.com vendors to move their listings over to eBay, using the new canned data and photos, which can be very efficient, but is eBay ever really going to be THE place to find books? They say it is, but then who is/are THEY?
The only thing I can think of that half has in common with ABE is that it seems kind of lowbrow and caters to cheap cheap cheap. Even more penny books there than there are on Amazon. When I order through ABE, I have a distinct sense of risk - even more so than on half.com.
Half got so bad that I went from around 10 orders a week from them to none in 6 months, so I stopped listing. It was a good place to start.