[Sigia-l] Best Small Book Business Shopping Cart Solution

[Andrew Boyd]

Chad Fennell wrote:
> I'm looking into setting up an e-commerce site dedicated to online
> book vending.  There are quite an amazing variety of shopping cart
> solutions from which to pick, and I don't know quite where to begin. 
> So, I thought I'd tap the collective wisdom of this group. Does anyone
> have strong feelings about a shopping cart solution for a small book
> vendor?  More about what I'd like:
>
>   
Hi Chad,

I like challenges so I have used osCommerce a couple of times to set up 
small ecommerce sites (a real estate site and a second hand book store). 
I can't comment on integration with Amazon but I can certainly see the 
need - manual entry of stock items into osCommerce is time consuming and 
to be avoided wherever possible.

It is free, has a large developer community, and is relatively 
configurable once you get used to the template structure. I am used to 
PHP so that was another plus.

As an alternative, I'd be surprised if there wasn't a turnkey 
drop-shipping solution around for bookstores - you pay someone an annual 
fee, do your own promotion, pick up a percentage. Either way, most 
people will think you are nuts ("How can you compete with Amazon?") but 
I think that there are still a lot of opportunities for value-added 
niche book sites.

Hope this helps. :)

Cheers, Andrew