Media Coverage

PUBEASY REVISITED

A Review by Web Reviewer Phil Groom of The Christian Market Place

October 6, 2003…Readers with good memories may recall my review of pubeasy.com back in April 2002; for those who'd like a reminder, the review is available online at www.pubeasy.com/news/media/review.html. Most of what I said then still stands: it's an excellent, fast loading and user-friendly site - any bookseller or trade distributor who isn't using it is missing out on one of the best and most powerful trade resources to emerge in recent years.

The site has continued to grow, with more and more publishers and distributors joining. Eighteen months ago Pubeasy's most significant Christian trade partners were Bookpoint (Ashgate and Hodder), Gardners, HarperCollins, John Wiley, Marston (Church House, Lion and SPCK/Westminster John Knox), Penguin, TBS/GBS, and Thomson (Routledge and Taylor & Francis). These have since been joined by Plymbridge and SCM-Canterbury Press, which leaves very few Christian titles unavailable through the Pubeasy network. Even so it remains unfortunate for the UK Christian book trade that Continuum/Orca and STL have still not seen the light, especially in view of stl.org's much poorer search facilities and presentation of search results. Both allow payment of bills via batch.co.uk, so they're half way there: all that's needed now is the full online ordering facilities; c'mon guys - there's no need to reinvent the wheel when there's a system like this in place!

Alongside Pubeasy's growth have been continuous developments, most important of which is the long awaited Pubeasy Central - go there direct: www.pubeasycentral.co.uk - where it's possible to search across all the affiliates' stocklists at once. It's a massive step forward, especially when compared to the Whitakers section of the site.

Search, for example, for John Bright's classic work, "History of Israel". Using Whitakers on Pubeasy you'll find only one listing for the now superceded SCM 3rd edition, with no link to the SCM subsite. Using Pubeasy Central you'll find three listings, two for that SCM 3rd edition linked to both SCM and Gardners, and one for the WJK 4th edition linked to Marston... but better yet, there's no need to take the links: assuming you have an account with the relevant affiliate, you can place your order immediately via Pubeasy Central.

Advanced Search is second to none, with standard options to search by ISBN, author and title enhanced by further options to search by publisher, to include or exclude out of print items and a choice of how to sort the results.

It's not all good news, however: whereas the rest of Pubeasy and Whitakers on Pubeasy work with older browsers (I've gone back as far as Netscape 4.7 and Internet Explorer 5.0), Pubeasy Central will only work with more recent versions, Netscape 6 and IE 5.5 (5.1 works fine on a Mac) and Safari (Mac OS X). Fortunately web browser upgrades - like Pubeasy itself for booksellers - are mostly free of charge: unless you're also using fairly old equipment, there's no need to be left behind.

Overall rating improved to 4.75 stars out of 5: well done all concerned!