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Not loving Amazon
64 days ago, Amazon shut down our "affiliates" account that allows us to fetch book data from them. My attempts to communicate with a human (by email or phone) went nowhere. Their original reason for banning BM was that they believed we were advertising on social media and had links directly to Amazon. That didn't make any sense but of course, there's nobody you can talk to. I worked around that by creating a new account. Today, Amazon has shut down my new account, as they've figured out that it's related to BM. Sigh.
 | | We have taken this step because we have previously closed an account that we have determined belongs to you or a person affiliated with you or acting in concert with you for violations of the Associates Program Operating Agreement, the Product Advertising API License Agreement, or one of the other Associates Programs operated by our affiliates. |
The good news is that BM has 10 years of book data from Amazon.com. The bad news is that I can't now get new book data from Amazon.com. I can, however, get new data from Amazon.co.uk and the other non-USA Amazon sites (shrug). I'm going to keep trying to find a way to talk to someone at Amazon, but I'm not hopeful. If you follow the news, you'll find lots of people find Amazon a bit difficult to "work with". Technically, because of this annoyance, what I have now changed is that searches for books that don't exist on BM will use the Amazon.co.uk database instead of Amazon.com. It's not a perfect solution, but it's not too bad. Already existing books will continue to link to Amazon. Many American editions are listed at Amazon.co.uk. My opinion is that this is what happens when 40% of American Internet purchases go to one company, and I'll leave it at that. Only Google, it seems, can win in a fight with Amazon: http://www.businessinsider.com/roku-google-vs-amazon-youtube-fight-2017-12 -john
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John Buckman
6 years ago
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Comments
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Good grief! Good luck with that one!
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In my opinion Amazon.com made a big mistake.
We (all of us in this website) are "big" readers and if we don't find the book in bookmooch, we are easily in amazon website...
to do what? To buy !!!
Good luck John,
Orietta (Italy)
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I second Benjamin’s question.
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Is this why I can't list any books?
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Why not just allow us to classify the books?
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dang it John, tell them to shove it. I've had no problem with your searches going to the UK site for book info. Joke's on them, because I'm just not going to buy!!! You've done enough trying, I say. I'm happy with what is working now. Their reasoning is faulty, I don't see a Twitter or FB link anywhere on your page and they can't prove it, but they know they are bigger than you so they don't care. Don't beat yourself up over it, no one else seems mad at you. (I'll leave it with seconding your opinion.) It's too cold around this nation to worry about that. I'm going to curl up with a book from BookMooch... after I dig around and find that address to send donations to you. Love what you're doing here, man. Don't give up!
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So sad to see Amazon/Bezos becoming one of the evil empire. BTW, I just sent a book to a mooch requester; but when I went back to check my pending list and mark it "sent," the request had disappeared. I never got a cancellation so don't have a clue. Someone in Ft. Wayne, Indiana will receive a book.
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Just want to add a PS. I sent a message to Amazon about their stupid decision... from a longtime customer (since 2005)... explaining that BookMooch actually brings them business. A stupid decision. Maybe if they get a lot of feedback from us "moochers," they will reconsider.
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To add insult to injury, the Browse-->Recently added books function on the Bookmooch website has stopped working. If I click on the 'Recent' button, I get redirected to a page that says 'no recent books found'. Has anyone else experienced this problem?
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The "no recent books" is a recurring problem. If past experience is anything to go by, it'll sort itself out.
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The problem you're having with Amazon, relative to actually speaking to someone, seems to be the same with all the tech behemoths, Ebay for example is a nightmare in this regard. It's so frustrating dealing with these people.
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In a Google vs Amazon fight, are you picking Google to be the "Good Guy?" Yikes! To be sure, I'm not saying Amazon is an angel. I'm just pointing out that Google once read the book "1984" and thought it was a better business plan for them than "Do No Evil."
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I don't think the other problems people posted are related to this change. The only thing I changed was when you "search amazon" for a book, and there's a list of Amazon stores to choose from, that "amazon.com" is no longer among them. Nothing else has changed on BM. Regarding "recent books", it will sort itself out in 48h. The reason it's empty is because books that get added first go to people who have wishlisted those books. They have 48h to grab them. Thereafter, if still unmooched, they go on the Recent Books page. When I restart the server, Recent Books gets reset to zero for 48h, due to how I programmed it (sorry!) This 48h delay is a feature; an attempt for the system to be more fair. No Mike, I don't think Google is an Angel. My point was that in a world of Titans, little folk get squashed. Yes, it's possible to get book data from other sources, but it's a lot of programming work, a LOT of work (a few months of part-time work for me, as I have two other jobs already, and those pay the rent, and there would go my sundays). For now, we're "stable" with Amazon.co.uk as the book source for new books, so I'm going to defer putting more on my plate, and I can keep sunday free as my hiking day. -john
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What about the refresh button? It's probably still set to amazon.com. I accidentally clicked on it, and the book's cover and description disappeared.
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Why is BookMooch having all this trouble with Amazon? PaperBack Swap provides the same type of services to its members, and yet there seem to be no problems with pulling up books from Amazon U.S. over there...
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I was going to suggest linking to Goodreads reviews...but guess which mega corporation owns that :AMAZON
100 years ago President Teddy Roosevelt busted up the big monopolies...is that even possible today with super-lobbyists,paid-for judges / politicians and red tape?
These mega corporations have more power than many countries.
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Amazon is too noncaring and ridiculous to deal with. Closed my seller account with them after nearly 8 years of putting up with their deafness. I guess they don't want you to help put money in their pockets anymore.
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Let us add our own covers
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It seems to me that Amazon Canada (amazon.cn) which you also have as a dropdown choice is likely to have more US-based titles than Amazon UK. Can you make Amazon Canada the default?
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John, in our hearts YOU are a Titan! Thank you more and more for your passion =)
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Can you post the info re Amazon's canceling someplace linkable so we can galvanize social media plz?
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Which Amazon.com referral tag is best to use: 'book0a9-21' or 'bookmooch-20'? During meantime, do you get money through 'bookmooch-20', or is that account "closed"? I use BookMooch's referral tag when shopping for all sorts of things other than books. Is 'book0a9-21' even valid on Amazon.com (USA)?
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Maybe you would be allowed to connect to Goodreads.com
I like that site for book information.
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As someone who works for a book distributor, I feel your pain as Amazon is not well liked at all at my workplace. Instead of them being our customer, its more like we are their customer and we have to play by their rules or we get penalized. Its crazy. Good luck with them!
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Amazon isn't what it used to be. I used to be a huge fan and I even used to sell some of my handmade products with them, they sold really well, but for some reason Amazon began to make it virtually impossible for me to sell on their forum. What it really comes down to is we are hurting their bottom line. Why would we buy the book from them when we can get it on here? The new CEO is horrible and is just out to Monopolize everything. Have you seen his book about how he wants to take over the world and crush wal-mart? Its disgusting. I just hope I'm there to see the day when Karma bites him.
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I see that due to Amazon's short-sightedness, The new posted books don't have descriptions of their stories anymore. That's what I used to decide if I wanted a book or not. I'm so fed up with Amazon that I closed my sellers account a month or 2 ago after selling on their sight for nearly 8 or 9 years. Their greed overtook their common sense.
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HOnestly, I am good with it whatever way you need to do it. I no longer buy the book from Amazon anyway. If I cannot find it here, my go to place has been Thriftbooks.com for a few years now. Not only can I usually find it but the customer service is really good.
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Hi, could this Amazon problem be also what's causing a problem with BM RSS feeds? On IE I'm getting this error 'XML document must have a top level element. Line: 0 Character: 0', Firefox offers a file for download 'application/rss+xml (1 bytes)'.
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Have you considered trying to partner with other booksellers - why not abebooks, for example, they seem to have a pretty big database and have books in many languages.
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Hello John - I don't know about other BookMooch members, but I'm ordering a lot fewer books from Amazon since they cut us off. Your excellent feature of having the lowest Amazon price appear on our wish lists right on the title/author line was a great temptation that they've now removed. Would it be any use to point this out to Amazon? I'd be happy to contact them about it, if I knew how to send an email there that would go to someone who might understand it. Thanks for BookMooch; I don't know how I'd do without it.
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Jacquie, Abebooks is actually owned by Amazon.
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I had a book listed with a title and description, but no author. I hit the Update Info page and now the description is gone as well. I think it would be nice to keep the old info if the field is blank in the new data rather than removing it. It seems like the US dataset has more info than the others, as I have seen an increase in books with no title or author listed since the switchover.
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I look at the BookMooch recently posted page every day. Since Amazon threw us out, there are always several entries there that show the poster's country and sometimes nothing more. I tried clicking on the link to the poster's home page, next to their name, from which I can see their inventory, but if they have more than a hundred books listed, it's annoying and time-consuming to go through all of those to try and figure out which one the missing book information belongs to. Has anyone figured out a way to find out at least the titles and authors of these books?
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Many of us relist books previously mooched. If the "mooched" pages were searchable in the same way as the wishlist, we could simply search for the book, click on it and relist. Easy. But it's not currently very user-friendly to have to trawl through pages of previously mooched books.
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Oh my gosh! I was so frustrated by the amazon.uk thing because if I can't find what I want but I'm on Amazon already I can just add it to my cart and buy it. Except I don't pay for a Prime on a UK membership. I pay for it on a US membership and I have zero interest in the complexities of getting from the UK to the US site. I'm also not paying for my mail forwarding service to send me something from the Uk that I can just buy in the US. I just pull up the ThriftBooks app on my phone and talk at it while I look at the UK Amazon site for reference. Amazon being stupid tends to save me money in the long run but there's no such thing as "too big to fail" they may need to remember that.
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Is this why there are so many entries with no title and no author name? It would be nice if you could find another solution for those.
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Oh, I have been wondering why there was always a UK in the address for some time now--I don't know when I first noticed it. When I am interested in a book on BM, I always check it out at Amazon as well, but of course, being in the U.S., I don't want to have a book sent from the UK unless it is not available here. However, when I have ordered from there, the books usually came rather quickly, so it's worth the wait. I don't know where to post this part, but I had a big scare this morning when clicking on my bookmark for BM, nothing at all happened for some time. All I could find was that the "Down for everyone or just me" site was reporting that it was for everyone. Fortunately, BM is now back up again. Phew!
I was active on PaperBackSwap many years ago, but have pretty much switched to BM because you don't have to worry about the condition of the books you offer, just describe it accurately. I have had a few unpleasant experiences ordering or offering books here, but I can count on one hand the really bad ones (2), and I always check here first when looking for a book. My object is not to resell or stock a library of perfect books, but to READ the ones I want. So, many good wishes for a continued long life, BookMooch!
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Has there been another change? Can't seem to list books; all it does is search!!
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Anything that comes up on a search, you should be able to add to your inventory from there. About halfway down on the page for the entry is a "give your copy" button and you can add your book that way.
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But when books don't come up in search (anything new) you can't add them. It really needs to be fixed.
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Agreed, but with everything going on, I doubt it'll be resolved any time soon. There's a way to hand enter books in the meantime- I'm not sure how (I just donate books if they don't come up using an ISBN, author or title search) but I know other people have listed the instructions in the forums. I hope that helps.
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Sadly, I simply do not have the time (or the inclination) to hand enter the over 100 books that I have sitting in my bedroom to list on bookmooch. Disappointing. I do appreciate those of us who help by giving the instructions!
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