Canto VII - The Shady Vale of the Bookjackers...

“Bookjacking” is a term that most people will never have heard of, and that’s okay because it’s a very recent phenomenon. Most people however, who have an interest in books or who have bought books online, will have encountered them.

To begin with, I’m not talking about single-entity online booksellers such as the Book Depository or any particular bookshop’s purpose-built website; I’m talking about those web-based gathering houses which take everybody’s online presence and shows you who’s got the book you want for the price you’re willing to pay – places like ABEBooks, or Amazon, or Alibris, or AddAll, or Books & Collectibles. In and of themselves, these providers aren’t shady operators, but it’s at their sites that the bookjackers – like nasty little burrowing parasites – have made their home.

Bookjackers in short are online scammers. Here’s how it works. Say ABE has a book listed by a bookseller for $25 and this book is the only one listed at that site. The Bookjacker’s software identifies this title and then posts it, at a greatly inflated price – say, $80 to $100 – at Amazon or one of the other gathering sites. Soon other bookjackers follow suit, and suddenly a $25 book is being sold for stupid amounts of money at multiple sites. When an unknowing punter takes the bait, the ‘jacker buys the book from the original lister and forwards it on (maybe!) while pocketing the difference. Recent times have seen print-on-demand titles for $30 being re-sold for over a million dollars, simply because the ‘jacking process is automated and gets a little buggy when not monitored by human agents.

How do you spot a bookjacker? Shop around. If a book looks a little iffy wherever you find it, look on another site and see what it’s doing there. Look out for generic descriptions – “may have a dustwrapper if originally issued with one”, “may have minor wear and scratches”, “hundreds of satisfied customers!” – these encouraging pseudo-endorsements are designed to suck you in. To be really sure, contact the bookseller – the main benefit of these gathering sites is that they allow you to gain direct access the retailer so that you can ask about your purchase: no bookjacker is going to want to get chummy over a book that they don’t actually own.

The final check is the price. If the book you want can be found at another site with a price tag at least 50% lower than anywhere else, you’ve probably found the poor little tome that’s been ‘jacked.

Be assured that the big websites are doing what they can to identify and purge the thieves. In the meantime, many solo operators are banding together to “name and shame” the troublemakers. Here’s a list that’s a work in progress (and probably going to get much longer):

academic_book_guy

ADONAI BOOKS

amctj

anstinbooks

Any Book

BookGroveMedia

Book Deals

Book Smart

Booked Again

Books_Care

BookSleuth

BRILANTI BOOKS

Brooke Books

Castle Rock
Cloud 9 Books 
Colibris

CONTINENTAL MEDIA & BEYOND

Crashing Rocks

DailyDeal USA

East West Academic Books

elitedigital
Ergodebooks

ExtremelyReliable

fast-track-books

FishandSave

forest_of_wisdom
GlassFrogBooks
HPB - Blue
HPB - Diamond
HPB - Ruby  

International Books

jason_kurt

joypros

kime_enterprises

KingsRidgeMedia

lana's Shop

lance books

Lost Books

metropole_press

Migna Book Store

Murray Media

MyGrandmasGoodies

myrockland

nearfine-us

NOHINSA BOOKS

nuggetbooks33

OTTAPLACKAL BOOKS

Park Place Products

planet_books

profnath

Quality7

relationship

shopbychoice

soundtrack

southlandplace

Summit Read

technobookshop

the_book_community

thebookgrove

TOTAL BOOKS

TSCBOOKS

Vault Media

UCAEDU70

US_Bookseller

Vault Media

Woody's Books

worldreaders

Wisepenny Books

And rest assured that, if this is going on with booksellers, it’s happening with places like E-Bay and Etsy and with other types of collectibles like vinyl records and DVDs. Teh Interwebz can be a wonderful place; just remember that there are a lot of dickheads out there...