any suggestions for e-bookstore software?

[sk3pt1c]

hi there folks, i've been having some discussions with this dude and he wants to start an electronic bookstore, not e-books, just a store online that sells real books.
he wants to be sort of a reseller, he's not a publisher btw...
anywho, he had this idea that people could enter some of their personal info and/or mood and receive suggestions accordingly...
it does sound interesting but i'm not quite sure it's feasible on his budget...
so basically i'm looking for top notch software that could be expanded to include such functionality (i'm guessing they'd need to add loads of keywords to each book to make it searchable by such user criteria)
any suggestions and/or thoughts would be greatly appreciated, as usual
thank you for your time

ps. not looking for freeware

 

[sk3pt1c]

hm, this is either un-interesting or a tough topic :/

help?

 

[Cromulent]

Not really although it should be trivial to implement that feature yourself. Or pay someone to do it for you.

Just choose any ecommerce software and then extend it with your own features.

 

[redwarrior]

Magento There is a free version that is quite functional and versatile.

I personally like Zen-Cart. It's easier than Magento to jump into and get started faster. Free, and plenty of support and templates for customization.

 

[jpyc7]

Well, there's plenty of ecommerce software that are useful for inventory, shopping cart, payment, etc. functions.

Some random thoughts.

I think your question about "suggestion" software is that it is possible to do naively with keywords. The real question is if you look at Amazon's suggested purchases, do you expect to do better?

Consider that Netflix just had that $1 million dollar contest for improving recommended movies to their customers. The winning team consisted of people from AT&T Labs and other institutions that do research. That's not to say you or your friend won't have some insight, especially if you already work in the book-selling business, but you might not know how to best implement it.

Also, "mood" (if you really mean a temporary state of mind) is a bad way of doing suggestions since the book will be received a few days later.

By the way, I've seen internet book stores that have "book clubs" where the proprietor is choosing books to send out for people who have signed up to receive new books of a certain genre (like mystery). I have no idea how successful they are as I've never signed up for such a service.

Take my ramblings with a grain of salt. The only things I know about books is that I buy from local and internet book stores.

 

[sk3pt1c]

well, i don't think they're really looking to compete with amazon and such giants, it's more of a local market thing, mostly athens i'd assume and perhaps the rest of greece later on. (sorry if i didn't mention my location earlier)

the novel thing about this is that suggestions would be made based on personal information of each user as well as purchase history (which is what amazon does). granted, i don't know how well it'd work and how anyone can be considered responsible for adding said keyword to any book, but at the end of the day it's not something i need to think about now, i'm only helping out with the structure and perhaps give them some advice and so on...

magento looks good but i think the starting price of around 11000 per year (for the enterprise edition) is kinda forbidding for this undertaking, i will pass it along though...

thanks for your comments and thoughts