And for what purpose?

For the younger generation of booksellers who have already built very
successful businesses without the AB, this is already too late. All this
will accomplish is Balkanizing the trade according to generation: old people
will use the new e-AB and the young will ignore it for the dinosaur that it
is. It might have been a good idea four or five years ago, but I don't think
it's a good idea now. Despite all that, I would probably use it myself. At
35 I am kind of intergenerational. I remember the AB from my youthful first
days as a collector, but I never used it much in my business. (I'm also
intergenerational with typewriters and computers. I learned to type on a
typewriter in highschool, but never used one since then) Despite my
skepticism I would probably try it for a little while anyway; never turn
down an idea that might make you a little money just because you think it's
a little nutty--you never know which nutty ideas might actually work. But, I
did notice from reading the other replies to this post, that many of those
who sounded encouraged were of the older generation and their response
sounds like emotional loyalty to some relic of their youth. ... For this to
work, you will have to educate those under 30 or 35 (maybe even under 40 or
45) about what the AB was, because they've probably never even heard of it.

--Mark.

"Jonathan Grobe" wrote in message
news
As I mentioned a few weeks ago Rick Russell (you can find out more
about him at http://sangraal-books.com/ ) has set up a Yahoo
forum for frustrated eBay booksellers:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bsanon/

He has posted the following as to his plans:
------- Forwarded message follows -------
To:
From: "sangraal2003"
Date sent: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 23:52:40 -0000
Subject: [bsanon] We May be on the Way
Send reply to:

As of this afternoon, we have an agreement in principle (the
principals agree, now the lawyers have to word it right), for control
of the intellectual property, name and archives of AB Bookman.
Further, we have several big B&M people willing to work with us by
listing and buying. For the newer members of the profession, AB
Bookman was the Bible of the used/out of print/Antiquarian book market
for 50 years. An auction site with the name will draw thousands of
hits and lookers. We can now draw a large audience of buyers. What we
need is an auction site, and the ideas to shape it into a booksellers
site, we will also need a database site. It should be both more open
and more controlled than eBay or Amazon. The First edition section
should contain only first editions, and the seller should research
that, although a tool will be provided. Grading won't be standard, but
the criteria, must be stated.

SYI will be the first choice to host the auction site, because they
have been rather good to us and are trying to develop a software
auction equivalent of what made AB Bookman so great, the want lists. I
have been talking to other sites and designers, so they are just at
the top of the list, your suggestions are not only appreciated, but
actually in demand. Ditto the database site.

We have a short time to develop this, so any suggestions, ideas etc.
you have on making the perfect booksellers auction site, bookseller's
database site, anything else, now is the time. I will be doing a lot
of traveling, but will take a laptop and check in every possible
evening. I will be tying this to my own book's promotion and will be
getting other P.R., publicity help toward a launch. Anything you can
do will be appreciated.

Now, the big thing here is that we are going to need listings, good
ones, and lots of them. That is why I am calling in a lot of chips
from people I have done business with for years. We are going to get a
lot of lookers. If we have the listings, if they are good, we're going
to have the site we all want to sell our books, to auction our books,
without "policies", catagory switches and brown bag lunches.

We have the way to go now. A lot of the rest will be up to you. Start
talking to your friends in the business, let's keep this list growing.
Get your ideas up here to be kicked around. And start building a
database toward launch time.

Rick Russell

--------End forwarded message --------

Again, if interested you might join the list at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bsanon/