The Bookseller.com

9th May 2008

Alan Giles spent 20 years in bookselling with Waterstone’s and W H Smith. He retired as c.e.o. of HMV Group last year to take up non-executive and teaching roles.

Sole traders

21.03.08

We can all be retailers now. Just as YouTube brings out the budding film director in us, a new type of website has reduced the entry barriers to setting up a "shop".

The trend started with eBay, which quickly evolved from an outlet for that unwanted Christmas sweater from Aunt Maud to a forum for back bedroom traders to peddle crafts, memorabilia etc. Amazon Marketplace was next; when recently purchasing an electric toothbrush from the reassuringly named "Professional Dentistry Supplies", my vendor turned out to be operating from a residential address in Preston. But now technology is blurring the boundaries between entertainment, socialising, working and shopping. "Social shopping" websites enable you to recommend lists of your favourite products to your friends, or even set up a turnkey retail operation where design, hosting, fulfilment and payment is all outsourced. All you do is select the products, and wait for the commission to come rolling in.

Zlio, a French start-up that launched in the UK in late January, enables you to "set up your own online store for free, start selling products in just a few clicks, and earn commissions on each sale or click" (www.zlio.co.uk). Its virtual shopkeepers draw on the inventory of more than 60 underlying merchants such as M&S, John Lewis, Waterstone's, Play and HMV. It's an excuse for any of us to impose our prejudices and tastes on an unsuspecting public. If you can't be bothered to search Amazon for the Dire Straits back catalogue go straight to "KnopflerStore"; there's a shop that only sells flight simulators; "All about Kevin Spacey!" (store names with exclamation marks are de rigueur); and—my favourite—"Cornish Tin", which bizarrely sells DVDs, mugs, and games whose only unifying characteristic is that they're all packaged in a tin.

Zlio seems sure to be followed by US equivalents like MyPickList.com and Amazon's "aStore" service. Such sites are good news for publishers and wholesalers; a good proportion of the 210,000 stores set up via Zlio have books as a core product category. A myriad of online specialist retailers, narrowly targeting the most obscure interests, can only help boost sales from "the long tail" of low-volume titles which find it increasingly hard to secure shelf space in the shrinking ranges of physical bookshops. Digital word-of-mouth is a powerful tool for selling books, and sites meeting specialist interests will soon carry links to a number of one-man-band retailers who have drawn their ranges together with insight, expertise and passion.

Right. I'm now off to set up "Easy Money!", the definitive online store for King ­Crimson fans.

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