Publishing, bookselling and the World Wide Web

Reports research into the ways the publishing and bookselling industries ar e using the World Wide Web, based on samples drawn from the bookselling and publishing categories in the Yahoo! search engine directory and a survey o f the sites, Reports results of a questionnaire survey sent to the identifi ed companies in the hope that it would be possible to establish how these i ndustries were using the Web and, by comparing the data with the results fr om the reexamination of the earlier sites, to be able to see how similar, o r dissimilar, the book trades' use of the Web is to other industrial sector s. The study formed part of a continuing investigation into the business us e of the World Wide Web. It is concluded that publishers and booksellers ar e clearly committed to online selling and, since over a third of publishers are selling online, calls into question claims that they are unwilling to alienate bookstores by selling direct to customers. The majority of booksel lers are actively engaging in online selling. Only 15 per cent of Web sites have electronic mail ordering and e-mail ordering appears to be increasing ly replaced by online forms.