I just reviewed a new site, BookHitch.com, that was submitted to my Writing Resource Directory that allows authors and publishers to submit their books for free . There is a pay-for-premium-listing that includes an image of the book with more space for a description. The regular cost is $49.95 per year but right now it’s only $19.95 per year. Either price is reasonable for a directory type listing and cheap for any type of advertising. The only problem is that it’s a fairly new site with very little PR and book marketing is an extremely competitive market online. But, every site started out as new once upon a time.
The site is simply designed, nice and clean and easy to navigate. I’d prefer to not have to find what I’m looking for by having to wade through the drop-down list of categories but that’s probably a personal preference simply because I have worked on many directories and prefer to break up top level categories into smaller child-categories. It just make everything look cleaner and makes it easier for people to find what they are interested in.
I like the concept of this site and I’ve though about doing something similar but with more features. I guess I should get serious about adding a feature similar to this to my resource directory. Some of the features I’d like to offer will take some time to setup. I’d be curious to know what others think about the BookHitch, so please leave a comment and tell me your thoughts.
Update: After doing a little more research on BookHitch, I discovered that the only contact information on the site is an email address and that the domain record has a private whois. What that means is that the owner of this site is basically anonymous, yet you, as a customer, have to give him/her your personal information in order to get a premium listing. Now, why would anyone do that? Why would anyone hand over their hard-earned monry to an anonymous person? And why does he/she need a private whois record if they aren’t hiding something?
Nope, I can not recommend this site to anyone and will be removing it from my resource directory. If you want to read more about my opinion, along with others, read this post and the ensuing comments on Matt Cutts site, a Google employee. Also note that not everyone agrees with me but thus far I’ve only read excuses for hiding whois information behind a proxy. As a consumer, I can not risk giving my personal information to an anonymous business person.
Another Update: Because the marketing director and webmaster for Bookhitch decided to leave comments to this post, my curious nature took over and I went in search of more information. I’ve allways said that no business or person is as anonymous online as they would like to think they are. Apparently, Bookhitch is part of a print-on-demand publishing newtork, NetPublications, Inc., based in Poughkeepsie, New York. Each of the company’s business domains are registered to a Chris Thurtle, though he isn’t the actual owner. The owner is William R. Grogg and he is the founder of Bookhitch.
Now, why would Mr. Grogg want to keep ownership of Bookhitch a secret? There is complete contact details on his other sites and the whois records do have the same physical location. His other sites along with NetPublications other affiliations are on the company’s website. Why isn’t Bookhitch there and why the whois proxy? I can only speculate.
To be fair, I did not find any complaints about Mr. Gorgg or his companies. However, I didn’t really look for complaints. My focus was on discovering who owned Bookhitch and maybe get a hint as to why an online business would be using a whois proxy to hide behind. Once I discovered the main business along with his self-publishing and small press businesses, I looked even closer at Bookhitch. Doing random searches, I found every book published and printed by one of Mr. Grogg’s companies that I searched for was listed in Bookhitch as a premium listing. I don’t really see anything wrong with what they are doing unless they are recommending Bookhitch’s premium service to their self-publised authors and/or small press customers without disclosing ownership.
I think that its a great site with a clean and easy to use interface. The search is fast and return very relevant results. No popups no nothing, very user frindly and great place for people to list their books without hassle.
The interface isn’t that easy to use, especially for those with very little knowledge on how to search in order to actually find what they are looking for. It’s easy enough for those who have mastered the search engine queries. But most of the people I talk to have no clue as to what a keyword is, let alone how to think of one in order to do a viable search. These people are the average Internet user.
The drop-down list of categories is annoying and some of the categories have questionable material, like Study Aids, where there are 6 listings, all leading to the same site, marketing the same ebook. And note that the url is not search engine friendly, nor is it friendly for some browsers. The %20 in the url is there because a space was left between the two words, Study and Aids. The browser inserted the %20 in order to display the page. Note: spaces in a url are incorrect and will cause problems for users and for the site in the long run.
Then there’s the Gardening category that lists several sites more than once and each same-site-listing goes to the same page. How much redundancy can potential users ignore before going elsewhere to find what they want?
The sites redundancy will hurt how well it does in the search engines, which in turn will not generate enough traffic to be viable to those listing their books, especially for those paying for the listings. So, no, I don’t agree that this site is user friendly. I do agree that it’s a good idea and something that some can benefit from.
I actually signed up with them awhile back but later found out that they don’t spend any money on advertising their site. And not only that but let’s say you’ve written a book tilted Dance and your name is Jane Smith. When you do a search on Google or Yahoo and put in “Dance, Jane Smith”, their site never comes up where as if you advertise your book on more popular websites such as Amazon, your name and book title will pop up whenever someone does a search.
A writer who likes to help other writers:
I did a little research and none of the BookHitch’s directory pages are indexed on google which is why you can’t find your book listing on their site.
Another thing I found, or didn’t find, would normally cause a red flag to pop up for me but for some reason I missed it when I reviewed the site originally. I’m going to add it to my review.
Dear Gloria,
I am the webmaster at Bookhitch.com and seeing people following the links from your site to ours, I decided to investigate.
I appreciate your concern about companies that use private WHOIS information, but your comments regarding bookhitch are inaccurate.
I think the comments on Matt Cutts site sums it up nicely:
“WHOIS data is provided to the entire world, via a widely distributed database, with no benefit provided back to the listed web master. Customer data provided via an order form on one web site is not so publicly distributed, and the information was traded to enable a transaction benefiting the consumer. In some states, that web master is also bound by law and by contract to reasonably protect the consumer’s information.”
Secondly, Bookhitch doesn’t take your credit card information. If you had followed a transaction you’d see that we never see or collect any credit card information and it takes the buyer directly to authorize.net - they are the only ones who receive the credit card information.
You could provide bookhitch with completely false information and we would have no way of knowing. Plus, free listings don’t require a credit card anyway, so again you could be completely anonymous to us if you wished.
Thirdly, a private WHOIS is not the same as a false or missing WHOIS record.
The WHOIS still displays the name of the company. I contacted NSI to see what their policy was on the private WHOIS records: If a company does not disclose their correct business name on the record displayed in the WHOIS they will close the account. If NSI receives a subpoena they will release the company information.
WHOIS information can also be easily faked using the private or anonymous WHOIS services, so how often should you rely upon the information that is there in the first place?
You said yourself on Matt’s site:
“I work on a few major web directories and my research, which is extensive, has shown me that most who use anonymous whois services, have something to hide. The percentage of those who don’t have anything to hide is minuscule in comparison to those who do.”
Therefore you *do* acknowledge there are some sites who use Private WHOIS who *don’t* have “anything to hide”.
To be honest in my extensive web research the average user has no clue what WHOIS is, let alone how to use it.
I agree WHOIS is one avenue to pursue an unscrupulous company, but it is one of many: Contacting the ISP, contacting the credit card processor, refuting the card charges.
If you still prefer not to recommend bookhitch.com, that is your perrogative ofcourse, but I would ask you to please correct the statements in your update.
Chris, thank you for a well thought out comment. I will change the update about the credit card info but are you saying that the BookHitch doesn’t get any personal information from clients? But we can both agree that the owner gets their money, right? I’m not referring to the non-paying clients.
I’d like to address a few things you have written. There isn’t a physical business in this country that doesn’t have to supply full ownership details and anyone can get that information so why then is it okay for an online business to not supply the same thing. And why should the whois info benefit the domain owner in some mysterious way? Isn’t it benefit enough to put their potential clients minds to rest, at least to some degree? There is no way for a customer to know if a private whois is false or not. And an order form or contact form can be sent anywhere and to multiple people without the user ever knowing. As a webmaster, you should know that. My first experience with spam was from using a contact form. It took a very skilled person to track down how the spammers got my email address.
You are correct in that most people know nothing about a whois or how to use one to find ownership information. It’s just as tool and I do tell people how to use it and why they should use it. I deal with people all day on an intimate level (in my real-world job) and most are afraid to do any kind of business online, even when they find some kind of hard to find item or they have been scammed in the past or didn’t get what they thought they were purchasing. They don’t know who to trust. What I do is give them the tools to research an online business and the red flags to look out for. The whois info is but one tool I give them. It’s not a stand along tool. I tell them to verify the sites info with the whois info. If the whois is a proxy then there is no way to verify anything.
Yes, I’m aware that it can be forged but it’s not the only source of information. If a site doesn’t have complete ownership details and the whois is a proxy, then there’s no point to going any further - big red flag! Well … actually, there are other ways but the average user would not attempt to do that kind of research, nor should they have to. If there’s full contact details on the site but the whois is by a proxy, I tell them to call the number before purchasing anything. I also tell them to never use a contact form, ever! Yes, they could still be scammed out of their money but doing business with an anonymous owner is just plain stupid in this day and age.
No, I do not think that every business owner who is using a proxy whois service is a scam artist. I’m sure there are many who are reputable as far as you get what you pay for. But I hold stead-fast in my belief that they are hiding something. My only point is that there is no way to know why they are hiding and no way to establish any amount of trust. It’s just too risky to do business with an anonymous business owner.
Really, you need to look at this from a consumers point of view. A business owner needs to establish some kind of trust. Hiding behind a proxy and not supplying full contact details on their site doesn’t say I’m trustworthy. How can anyone possibly establish trust and maintain anonymity? I just can’t rap my mind around that concept and yet, there is a huge portion of online businesses doing just that.
Chris, you seem like a nice guy and I do like the concept of BookHitch. I don’t like the navigation and how some of the listings are listed multiple time but the concept is a good one in my opinion. But without contact details on the site (other than an email address) I just can’t recommend it. I think it has potential, I’m just not sure it will reach its full potential in its current incarnation.
Dear Gloria,
I am the marketing director of bookhitch and have been following this blog for a while, as I do many of the sites that talk about bookhitch. I would like to address some of the comments:
All payments for premium ads are made through a secure website: authorize.net. We do not have access to the CC information. When users sign up for an account, we collect data about demographics and geographical distribution (as every company does), but we also emphasize that we do not give out any personal details/sell lists.
Like many companies starting out, we are primarily focusing on PR before paid ads. Advertising means a paid, non-formal means of communicating with your target audience, and starting out we have placed ads, but also prefer to build business relationships (personal communications). We will be launching newspaper ad campaigns in 2007.
We primarily maintain communications with our site users via e-mail (like amazon), but do have a phone number that is available that is made available for individuals who contact us and need further assistance.
We would also like to point out that bookhitch has received very good reviews from our users, which span from authors, publishers, and bookstores. These comments can be found in the “Your Views” section.
We have not received any complaints about the services we offer, but instead enjoy the valuable feedback each one our site users can give us about features we should add or we could improve. We use this information to improve the site. Like any new company, there are always going to be negative comments, but we appreciate the added concern, especially at a time when Internet companies, especially, suffer because of a few shoddy businesses. But I do not think implying that bookhitch could be one of these businesses is valid, especially when all of our users (in the thousands) have never complained.
We are a very community oriented company, which is why we developed our community book project and are giving back to educational organizations. It does take a great deal to build relationships with consumers, which is why we have a lot of beneficial features to the site. I felt that I had to address some of the topics discussed, especially when an issue of trust between bookhitch and its users has never been an issue.
Hello, Emma
There is nothing in your comment that changes the fact that the Bookhitch is doing business anonymously while collecting their customers personal information. Amazon.com does provide complete contact details on their site along with other business details. Plus, they do not hide their business details behind a whois proxy.
Just to be very clear on my position. I didn’t imply that Bookhitch is a shoddy business. I stated that Bookhitch is doing business anonymously and by doing so, it raises a big red flag. Why doesn’t Bookhitch supply complete contact details on their site and why are they hiding their business details behind a proxy? If you want to compare your customer service to Amazon.com, why do they freely divulge their business details while bookhitch doesn’t? These are not questions I need an answer to because the answer would not change the visible facts. They are questions a potential customer should ask themselves before becoming involved with any online business. If there were a valid reason to not supply contact details and to hide that information behind a proxy, then Amazon.com would surely have more reason to do it than the vast majority of online businesses.
I did look at the customer review section of Bookhitch. I don’t give much credence to customer reviews simply because a business would never put negative reviews up for all to see. And, they are often planted reviews. However, in this case it could be used by potential customers to find customers they can contact and ask about their experience with a Bookhitch and if they paid for the service or used the free listing service. I actually looked at a few publishers sites and guess what I found? Complete contact details on their sites and full whois information. Imagine that! I may contact them myself. If I do, I will put any information I get here.
You say that trust has never been an issue. How can potential customers know that’s true, because you said so, a speaker associated with an anonymous business owner? Anonymity does not foster trust when customers hard-earned money comes into play.
First of all, love your banner. Second, if someone wants your money they should not stay anonymous. I really appreciate the idea of book marketing. Gardening is a specialty of mine and have gotten so many resources on this subject throug book marketing.
Thanks for the update.