‘Love Letters’ Promotion Wide Reaching Success
On June 10, AbeBooks launched a ‘Love Letters of Great Men’ promotion inspired by interest in a non-existent book featured in the new Sex and the City movie. The same day, the Associated Press issued a story on the interest in this imaginary book, and in love letters in general, generated by the Sex and the City movie, with AbeBooks prominently featured. (The story was pitched to the AP by Richard Davies of our PR department.) By June 11, the story had been picked up by over 130 media outlets, including CBS News, Fox News, The Washington Post, The New York Daily News, among many others. Some of our best media coverage can be seen online, here. The story reached as far as Hong Kong, India, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and more. Great exposure for AbeBooks and, more importantly, your books!

Changes to AbeBooks Payment Service:
A Bookseller Bulletin was sent on June 2 detailing upcoming changes to AbeBooks Payment Services. As we announced on April 2, AbeBooks will begin offering a number of new payment card options to buyers, and will be eliminating the option for all credit card purchases via Seller Direct, effective June 23, 2008. As part of the ongoing requirements for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard compliance (PCI DSS), we are now required to discontinue the transmission of all credit card information to our booksellers. Booksellers will continue to have the option of offering other seller direct payment methods, such as check or money order.

For full details, please click Here.

Textbook Season is Fast Approaching!
Every Textbook Season on AbeBooks is busier than the last. We’re already gearing up for an exciting July, August and September and wanted to offer a few tips to help booksellers prepare for the rush. Review textbook season best practices.

Launch of Author Landing Pages in June
Author Landing pages will be launched in the coming weeks. These pages will show authors’ names, with a list of books by that author. The aim of launching these pages is to aid our search engine rankings and add to the Product Landing pages we launched in June. The author pages will enhance the number and content of our landing pages for search engines to index!

See here for an example Product Landing Page and watch the author name – it will become a link in the coming weeks.

Unusual Items Found Inside Books
Last month, we asked for your help for a website feature and press release about odd things found inside books – money, love letters, plane tickets, etc. Many of you responded with some unique and interesting stories – so thank you! The feature has been picked up by many book bloggers and has driven heavy traffic to our site. Please click here to see the full story.

Beta Release of HomeBase 3.0 Expanding!
Beta testing of HomeBase 3.0 has already begun with a small group of testers! We will be expanding the number of testers gradually, based on operating systems and system specifications. If you are interested in Beta testing HomeBase 3.0, please take our survey.

Customer Support Tip

Checking for Orders Online
by Lily K.

With Textbook Season approaching, it’s a good time to remind all booksellers that we recommend that you sign on to your AbeBooks account at least once a day to check for new orders, rather than wait for email notification. Checking your orders online saves you time, since you must process orders from the AbeBooks web site anyway.

Changes made by your ISP, spam filters, and virus protection software can all contribute to problems receiving your AbeBooks email. Our order notifications are convenient reminders, but should not be solely relied upon to inform you of orders.

Click here for more information on checking for new orders online.

Colorado Book Seminar Scholarship
AbeBooks is pleased to offer a scholarship to the 30th Annual Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar. Enter our contest to attend this highly reputed seminar for booksellers, librarians and collectors, and you could win your seminar tuition - a $1,195 USD value. Full contest details and entry form can be found here.

American Library Association Annual Conference
We will be attending the ALA Annual Conference at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, California, from June 26 to July 3, 2008. Contact Maria at mhutchison@abebooks.com if you’d like to meet during the ALA event.

Most Expensive Books Sold on AbeBooks in May!

Buyers appreciate that they can find any book from AbeBooks booksellers, and the list of most expensive books sold on AbeBooks.com during May once again shows how vast your selection is!

Click here for the full list.