BookTrakker

"Another monumental project which I started during our annual February break was to update my book cataloguing software. I had been using an old version of Homebase for years and was comfortable with it, but wanted to start listing books on Amazon, which has a whole set of issues associated with that; chiefly, the requirement that books without ISBN numbers (which started only in the 1970s) need to have a specific Amazon identification number attached to them to be listed on the bookselling site.

Again, it's another long and tedious project of going through my book database yet again and finding the correct Amazon id to upload and selecting out heavier books to exclude from international delivery, but I bought a copy of the BookTrakker software, which, as advertised, simplifies many of the dreary tasks associated with online bookselling and has the dynamo time-saving feature of uploading all my book updates to our website, Alibris, Biblio and Amazon with one click.

Amazon has quickly grown to be my bestselling used book site and this helps in any economic climate. I got back my purchase price for BookTrakker almost immediately through Amazon book sales and would highly recommend it to my colleagues."

"I was primarily an Amazon FBA seller who held less than 10% merchant fulfilled (MF) inventory and was looking to offer my MF books outside of Amazon. To give you perspective, our company has about 13,000 books in inventory and is steadily growing.

I experimented with a few different software options before choosing one, and I picked BookTrakker for the reasons I will outline below. I am very satisfied with the software after having used it for over a year. BT was instrumental in my company moving away from FBA.

BT helped us increase MF sales by 50+% by allowing us to easily offer books on Ebay, AbeBooks, Biblio, Alibris, as well as our own website trueoakbooks.com. While Amazon still pulls ahead in sales for the books we have in inventory, it is a great feeling to not be reliant on one marketplace (especially not AZ who is infamous for its treatment of 3rd party sellers). I now feel like our company can not only survive but thrive completely independently of Amazon, if that becomes a necessity.

I wholeheartedly recommend any Amazon seller (or any online bookseller) to give selling on different marketplaces through BT a try. Well worth the subscription and time investments. While the software has a learning curve, it's a given to me that using it was a great move for my business.

BT has a versatile database system. It allows the seller to conveniently pull bibliographical data from ISBNs when listing, manage the seller's own book images and to upload them conveniently, set different prices for different marketplaces, as well as price/reprice manually with a research tool or through a repricing software. BT allows our employees to work on the database (listing, editing, uploading photos etc.) simultaneously on different computers through the Network setup, which I also recommend.

In addition, BT makes it very easy to make sure sold books are removed from marketplaces at the click of a button through the Get Orders function. Hit Lists make it very easy to sort books or do bulk edits across thousands of listings. BT supports my company's smart-SKU system, something I had difficulty with when trying competitor software.

The above are all features I use daily. BT also offers numerous other features I either never use or do not use regularly, some of them being for brick and mortar stores (our company is only online).

Their team provides very good customer service. I always know that when something is wrong, they will do their best to be responsive and fix the issue at hand ASAP. They are nice people to deal with. I have never experienced them do anything dishonest after numerous interactions.

Overall, the increased sales and quality of life improvements BT provided made me love running a MF business. As a company, we are moving away from FBA after uncountable frustrations and losses the program caused us due to its unreliability. BT has helped us make the transition into a primarily MF business gracefully.

I highly recommend any online bookseller to use BookTrakker as their book management software, and I can't stress the importance of an Amazon only seller diversifying through different marketplaces enough.

— Ari Bayvertyan, Owner of True Oak Books"

"I wanted to publicly thank Andy over at BookTrakker for once again providing the most amazing customer service experience I have ever had. I recently had to do a system restore and had to reinstall BookTrakker. Everything was working except the Amazon upload. Andy went above and beyond, emailing me until after 10 PM (way beyond normal customer service hours) trying to solve the problem.

When we figured out the issue, he patiently walked me step by step through the resolution process. Not only is BookTrakker a fine program, and well worth the purchase price, the customer support included is truly priceless! Well done, sir!"

"I am truly thrilled with Menatay Books' decision to entrust BookTrakker, and your team, with our growing data management/online listing needs. Granted, I was fairly confident from the start that we would be happy with BookTrakker, based on extensive research, countless positive reviews and testimonials, live testing (with any and all demos I could get my hands on), and your wonderful technical support (even before we purchased).

Now, however, having been using BookTrakker for a couple of months, I am in utter awe by its design and capabilities. BookTrakker is, in my opinion, the all too rare example of a software application that does precisely what it's intended to do, and does it well -- intuitively, reliably, and flexibly. You clearly designed this, from start to finish, with the end user in mind. All the time that I thought I'd spend designing and developing my own database (I tried HomeBase, but it is severely lacking and not entirely trustworthy in my experience -- after all, you know they say about a "free lunch") can now be spent developing my business.

And all this at great price. I am glad I didn't, but I would have paid a lot more. Value wise, BookTrakker beats the competition hands down. Based on my experience with both, HomeBase is far less of a value at $0.00 than BookTrakker is at its price. My guess is that others using BookTrakker would wholeheartedly agree. So, in short, thanks for filling a need perfectly!"

"I'm still fairly new to BookTrakker, but I'm beginning to get the hang of its more powerful and flexible features. Today I created a Hit List to select Available records with the Range Type set to Date|Modified From 01/01/2003 (well before I began entering records) To 08/31/2004 and I had it Sort|Descending on Dealer Price. This gave me a list of all available records that I hadn't revised for at least 1 month, sorted from highest to lowest price. I then opened a couple of browser windows to look up my books by ISBN on Amazon and Alibris.

Working with BTP on the left-hand side of the screen and swapping between Amazon and Alibris on the right-hand side, I was able to quickly review/revise dealer and retail prices based on the quality, price, feedback, and fill rates of the current competition. I chose to put my efforts into reviewing the highest price books first to encourage higher priced sales for my efforts. In any case, this is probably old hat to you folks who have been using BTP for years, but I'm still tickled with how easy BTP makes it for me to manage my inventory."

"I was a Homebase user initially. I wanted the ability to more things with the database than was possible given some of the limitations of Homebase. About 2 years ago I switched to BookTrakker. I sell both online and through our B&M store. I really appreciate the ease with which I can create multiple catalogs using BookTrakker. Also, it allows one button uploads to a variety of online services including ABE, Alibris, and many others including your own website. I use version 2.0. Version 3.0 has just become available with a lot more features as suggested by the BookTrakker user community. Soon I'll upgrade to the new version.

I think perhaps the strongest endorsement I can give is the immediate customer service and technical support provided by BookTrakker. Once you're part of BookTrakker you get to know Andy. There is a real accessible person behind this software and you can talk to him easily. There is also a user listserve through which the user community can get additional information and help each other. There was virtually no problem in converting Homebase to BookTrakker. It's easily done and gives you a lot more flexibility when completed."

"It did not take a lot of thought on my part to conclude that BookTrakker is a wise investment for me and my plan to expand my home business of book sales. Within the first two weeks of the trial the program paid for itself in increased sales, time saved (and I've barely touched upon its features and capabilities!), inventory control and organization. Customer service is readily available, with Andy and his staff able to communicate at the level of the user, even those of us who are "technically challenged".

The difference, I think, is that this program is designed by someone who understands the needs of book sellers, vs someone who designs a product upon theory and not practical use or application. I recommend that any book seller, especially home based or new sellers with expansion plans make the purchase. It will save you both time and money, allowing you to maximize the actual hours you put into your business with enhanced financial return upon your time and effort. One of the best investments I have made this year."

"We made the decision early on to have our own searchable database, rather than simply attaching our search back to Abe or Bibliofind. The next issue of course was how do we do this and maintain our listings at on a daily basis without incurring excessive maintenance fees from our web designer. The answer was simple. BookTrakker. Because we use BookTrakker for our database, we felt we could utilize the same simple upload method this program incorporates on our own website.

Our web designer helped us contact a programmer who wrote a few simple lines of code, and we are able to upload to Small Books in the same manner we upload to Abe, etc. We also feature catalogues that are extracted from our database through BookTrakker topic field. Again, because we are able to maintain in such a simple manner day-to-day from our own computer, our catalogues and database are always current. We seldom have to advise a customer that "the book they wanted has been previously sold." For those considering a new book database, or their own website, BookTrakker is an obvious choice on your holiday wish list."

"I used HomeBase until very recently when I bought BookTrakker Pro. I can’t begin to tell you what this has meant in terms of saving both efficiency and speed. Even taking out my learning curve while adapting to a new program, it is so much quicker to enter data (and easier) but best of all, with one button and about 2 minutes tops, I’ve uploaded my records to all 3 databases. And that alone is worth the money. Even if you are successful in getting HomeBase installed now and decide to get BT Pro later, you’ll still be able to import all of your HomeBase records into BT very quickly and easily.

If you’re not a typist, BT is perfect. It “assumes” capitalization, “remembers” author’s names, publishers, already has drop-down lists for all the most used things, like book sizes, conditions, keywords, etc. In it, you can see on one record what the book cost and what you’re selling it for (and there are some bells & whistles associated with this feature that I’m not currently using but fully intend to eventually), where you got it and where you’ve shelved it.

You can put a book on hold (in case you want to put it up on auction on ebay or for a potential customer) and remove it just as easily if the book doesn’t sell. If you have books in the store or in a mall (like I do) and you want to track them without listing them online, you can do that with the click of a button. I used to keep two sets of records...one with a book ID# (I used Excel for this) and Homebase. BT Pro assigns the next record # for me so now I only have to manage one set of records.

And most important of all is the service I’ve gotten. You wouldn’t believe some of the dumb things I did (and am still doing) learning this program (despite the fact that it is so easy, it’s scary—I even told Andy he made it TOO easy—I keep expecting the answers to be complicated and they’re not) and every time I’ve had a question, I’ve gotten an answer in less than 24 hours (and that was only once—on a Sunday...every other time it has been within MINUTES!) Patience, a good sense of humor, understandable instructions—and so on.

Honestly, I have no connection to this program and despite the fact that I sound like a salesman here, I don’t get a dime out of this. "...In Homebase, I was limited to what information was in the catalog when printing it out and no matter how little or how much info was there, I got 6 books to a page. And it didn't include my book ID# and always included everything else whether I wanted it or not. In BookTrakker, I can TELL it what information I want included on the Catalog Report. Including my book number. I can tell BookTrakker where I've shelved the book and what the spine looks like so my husband knows what he's looking for and where to find it when he pulls books for me. If I want to change the font so some portion of the report looks different, I can do so. I can sort the records by almost any criteria I want. I can rearrange the format of the reports as I see fit..."

"I downloaded BookTrakker Pro about 2 months ago, mainly out of desperation. Finding a ready made program that I liked seemed impossible until I tried BookTrakker. The learning curve is not too steep. It is an easy, natural transition from BM3. The whole program layout seems to be right in front of you all the time without being cluttered or confusing. It is a perfect design for a left hander like me who thinks visually rather than in the abstract... Sending files... is so easy. Just one mouse click and it’s done. Also, there are enough extra fields that you can tailor the program to suit yourself without feeling imprisoned by someone else’s working style... ...It is certainly worth (the cost) to me not to have to fiddle around trying to create a database. I’d rather be out buying books and cataloging them."

"Well, BookTrakker is a program the happy, enlightened few have been using to log on books and send them to the on-line system. It has made doing these tasks much speedier and easier. For example, start typing a publisher name and it finishes it for you. For the whole term "1st edition", just type 1. Same with most of the fields you normally use. I can do many more records in a sitting now than with other programs. It took me almost four years to put my first 5500 books on. Since starting with BT this spring, I have added another 2000.

That might seem piddling to most, but I also run my open store alone and handle everything with the on-line sales alone, so having something that takes a lot of shortcuts without costing quality of how my entries appear means a lot to me. Also, uploading to ABE, Bibliofind and the other systems is done with one click. It just goes down the line to each system in order after one little press of a mouse button! The support is superior. Write them an email help note and usually within 15 minutes you'll get a phone call. I can't recommend this program enough or the support that accompanies it. This is truly the next natural step forward in on-line bookselling."

"The test of a successful software developer is not whether the software is widely sold, but whether it does the job it was intended to do. There are many very happy BT users who would never switch., and I'm one of them. We are very grateful that Andy has given us a tool that speeds our clerical work so we have more time to sell books, and live a life. If others are happy with their own software, that's fine. But many of us would have a much less pleasant bookselling experience had Andy not made BookTrakker available to us. And I know I'm not alone in my gratitude.

We also appreciate the way Andy supports us as we try to adjust to the new or changing requirements of various data bases. I have never gotten such good customer service anywhere on any software I've bought before. The owner gives of himself to help others even when it doesn't always show in the bottom line. I always thought that showed greatness of heart. But I guess for some people the bottom line is all that matters. In my opinion Andy has cast his bread upon the waters, and according to the Good Book, it should come back to him seven-fold one of these days. All rewards are not in cash. Thank you, Andy, for what you've given those who use BookTrakker and who do appreciate your spectacular service."

"We switched to BookTrakker Pro after starting with BookMaster, and graduating to Record Manager, followed by BookMate. While each of those was an improvement upon the last, none ever offered all the aspects that we needed in a database management program, and we felt constantly frustrated by the limitations. When we found that BookTrakker Pro did almost everything we wanted, we jumped for it. The features we like are: Using the same program to manage inventory, contacts, trade credits, want lists, invoices and catalogues; print out lists in a variety of ways; one click uploads to a variety of services; immediate help working through problems that crop up with program use, including how to adapt the upload process to accommodate new services that come online.

BookTrakker is pretty intuitive in some ways, not in others. Learning the basics of how to use the program was pretty simple; the bells and whistles continue to unfold as we learn more and more about how to make the program work for us in ways we never imagined it could. It took some patience to get our records moved from BookMate into BookTrakker, but Andy was right there to help make the transition, and once we got everything switched over, it has been smooth sailing ever since. There are a few things we wish it would do, like print out mailing labels, but we like the program so much, we are willing to wait for features to be added later. We highly recommend the program to bookdealers."