A week to go

Good day bookies! Stand by for news and comment.

One week until Christmas. Are you ready? I haven't even had a tree up the last two years, don't ask why, but this year I am going to do my best to put one up. I hope your season is terrific!

*** For all of you Bonanzlers out there (you know who you are) the linked article will come as no surprise. To all of you Wigixers out there, it might. I knew the benefits of Bonanzle, being as BBG has a booth there, but Wigix is my next site to explore and learn.

With Ebay in crash and burn mode it was inevitable that dozens of alternate sites would try to gash out a chunk of market share for themselves. Older sites such as OnlineAuction, ioffer or even the miserably failed overstock.com auctions have been around and nibbled away at Ebay, without ever really taking root in the public consciousness. But the new breed is here and if I were Ebay, I would be concerned.

Sure, at the moment Bonanzle only has 14,000+ members and a little more than 500,000 listings. But the site was only officially launched on Sept. 1, 2008. Good grief people, it's barely out of beta and is the fastest growing alternate site in history. And there are books there, too. At least one other bookseller of note (besides me, natch) is there and more are signing up.

Wigix I'm not as familiar with, yet, but it's getting great press and that doesn't happen in a vacuum. So, even as Ebay blunders about screwing things up, people like me just don't care anymore because we have moved on. My concerns now are in watching a historic train wreck, the like of which the net has never seen. The demise of Ebay will be taught in business schools for decades to come.

Bonanzle and Wigix are coming on strong

*** Children's book collectors in New England are in for a treat. It seems a gathering of authors and illustrators are putting together their own tours of independent book stores, and that now more than 40 have signed on. Your friendly neighborhood bookseller thinks this is great, because, while he has nothing against chain stores per se, indies are much more responsive to the marketplace and generally add to the cultural health of a community.

New England Children's book authors and illustrators start their own tour