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Archive for May, 2009

BookScouter’s Feedback System

Monday, May 18th, 2009

I go through a fair amount of work to ensure that the vendor feedback system on BookScouter.com is accurate and comes from legitimate book sellers. For each submission, I go through a process to check several things that I have found indicative of problems.

Submissions may be rejected or deleted if I identify any of the following:

  1. Vulgar or offensive language
  2. Excessively poor grammar, punctuation, or spelling.
  3. Comments not specifically regarding the vendor to which they were submitted
  4. Comments not related to selling books
  5. Any attempt from a vendor to try to promote themselves or to attack another vendor

Vendors in violation of number five risk having their site removed from BookScouter.com and may be publicly humiliated.

Posted in Announcements | No Comments »

BookScouter Mobile Beta

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009

I’m very happy to announce the availability of a simple beta version of the BookScouter Mobile Application. It is available now at http://m.bookscouter.com. This initial release is a very simple price lookup system with minimal formatting and ‘fancy stuff’ to make it perform well on a mobile device. Please give it a try as you are out and about, and leave feedback in the comments below, or via the contact form.

I have been working for the past couple months on rewriting much of the code for the site, and the new mobile application is the first part that will be running on the new code. The new code base will enable development of some new features that I have been planning, but were difficult to impliment previously. In addition, the new code should perform faster and reduce some of the server load that has been stretching some limits this buyback season.

In the next week or two I’ll also be redoing the main website to be based on this new code. It won’t have many visible changes initially, but I’m excited to get it out there as well.

Posted in Announcements, Mobile | 3 Comments »

Wanted: Hints for Properly Packaging Books

Friday, May 1st, 2009

I’ve noticed that a common complaint is for people to ship new books to a buyer only to have them graded as used. I believe that some of this is due to people packing books poorly and having them damaged in transit.

Can anybody share some hints for properly packing books for shipment? I’ve pointed people to this link on ebay before, but it seems like a bit of overkill. I’m hoping to compile some simple, practical steps that people can use to ensure that their books aren’t damaged in transit.

I imagine their might be some different things to consider when mailing individual books versus sending a box of books at a time.

Please post comments here, or email me your tips. I’m hoping to add a new page or two to the site with your input.

Posted in Uncategorized | 3 Comments »