One problem is that the best site, AddAll, (where you can compare prices at
all the other major sites) doesn't have a program. I'm not too happy with
the proliferation of booksources anyway, for example, Powells is included.
Nice if you have a few bucks extra for each book, but we don't tell our
users that.
Fred
From: "limholt(a)excite.com"
<limholt(a)excite.com>
Reply-To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 2003 10:36:27 -0400 (EDT)
To: wikipedia-l(a)wikipedia.org
Subject: [Wikipedia-l] Revenue and ISBN Links
I've got a suggestion to make. Now that Wikimedia is in place and has a bank
account, I think the issue is ripe for discussion.
The Wikipedia special page 'Booksources' serves as a passthrough link to
various bookstores. When a book reference in Wikipedia includes an ISBN, any
reader clicking on that number gets to the Booksources page. A further click
on "Find this book" links to the external vendor's web site, pasing on the
ISBN when practical.
Many of book sellers have programs that permit an affiliate or referring site
the potential to earn revenue. In general, we could sign up then include our
organization ID in a link along with the ISBN. Amazon dot com is an example of
this usage. Based on the experience of other sites, there shouldn't be any
great income expected, but there's not much effort either. The use of this
option is totally transparent to the reader or user (unless they can interpret
the data passed in the URI).
I wanted to discuss possibility for two reasons: to see if there are
objections, and to look at presentation alternatives.
OBJECTION ARGUMENT:
I do not view this as a commercialization of Wikipedia. I have a guest card at
a local university library. They charge a small annual fee for this service,
but that doesn't make their library a business. Nor can I see this as any
danger to non-profit status, unless the revenue would exceed Wiki's expenses,
which seems incredibly remote. So, why shouldn't we take advantage of this?
PRESENTATION:
We do need to consider how of if we inform the reader of this 'feature'. There
are three broad choices available:
1. Just do it.
2. Implement the idea but inform the user.
3. Don't do it.
My own choice is 2, but I'd actually propose 2(A), along the following lines.
Explain to the reader (or user or editor) that Wiki may get a commission at no
added cost to them if they buy the book. Also explain that they if they want
us to get revenue, they need to buy it in one session, or come back through
Wikipedia if they decide on a later purchase. We could even offer two options
for passthrough, one with and one without a refer back to Wikipedia.
Any comments?
Regards, LouI on Wikipedia
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