We started online with INTERLOC, which became ALIBRIS. Then we added ABE, eBay, and then AMAZON and BIBLIO.

         Actually, our first online experience was with our ISP. When we signed up for dial-up access in 1994 with CyberGate they provided a shell account that let us have a website with them. It was fun learning HTML. Our first webpage was dated 12/15/94. No pictures in those days, only text.

         We joined INTERLOC in November 1995. We put all our books on the software they provided called Record Manager. We still use Record Manager to keep our inventory of on-line books and to upload to the different listing services. INTERLOC later got bought out by ALIBRIS. This probably happened in 1998 because this is the date they say we joined them. Through ALIBRIS our books can be seen on BARNES & NOBLE. Starting in about 2000 ALIBRIS' business model (meaning how they present books to the customer) has become increasingly weird. Consequently we shifted our emphasis to ABE.

         We have been with eBay since August 1, 1998. This is where we find a lot of books to buy. It is like the world's greatest garage sale. But it is a lot of work to find things. Unfortunately there isn't a table labeled "Things Grove Antiquarian Wants to Buy". You have to search and search. But you can sometimes find things you didn't even know existed. We sell the odd book sometimes on eBay. Sales on eBay are at wholesale prices - but the book is gone.

         We concentrated on selling on ABE immediately after joining them on 11/13/98. We moved our web page to their site and were quite satisfied with them for a long time. But, in the last several years ABE has developed severe quality problems and its listings have become clogged up with penny listers and print-on-demand sellers. Because of this our sales there have sunk to a level that no longer covers our fees. On 02/10/06 they sent all their booksellers an eMail entitled "Boobseller Bulletin". That's when we knew what they really thought of us. Consequently, we have begun shifting over to BIBLIO.   I have made a list of a few of the ABE problems.   1. The stuttering date problem.   2. The BACK button doesn't work right on searches.   3. If you click to look at a bookseller's website ABE opens a special kind of window that excludes the top toolbar so you can't save the site to favorites. And then if you move to other pages in the site you can't use the BACK button.   4. If you edit your listings online you can't save without filling in their ugly and nonstandard condition fields.   5. On 4/23/08 where photos used to be differentiated between bookseller supplied and stock photos - they are now all labeled stock photos.   6. On 7/21/08 the SCROLL problem appeared. Search result pages (and others) no longer fit on the screen. You have to horizontal scroll to see all the text.    7. In August 2008 our rating dropped from 5 to 4 stars. Despite the fact that we have NEVER not supplied a book. The reason is that our sales are low here.   8. In December 2008 on the search page a results per page with a default of 10 was added. This, combined with #2 above makes searching more difficult.   9. In April 2009 the link from ABE to www.GroveBook.com disappeared and was replaced by what they call a "storefront". Ugly. They obviously don't want the customers contacting us.

         In 2003 the problems at ABE suggested we should move our website from ABE and we were up and running with an independent   www.GROVEBOOK.COM   in October 2003.  Indeed; on December 12, 2008 ABE eliminated hosting bookseller webpages.  At the end of 2008 it was announced that Amazon was buying ABE.   We'll have to see what that means for us.

          Looking for another way to sell books we joined AMAZON as an Individual Account in October 2005.   Our inventory there is small, but growing, and we have been very successful there with it. AMAZON, after all, is the largest site. It is several orders of magnitude larger than ABE or the other listing sites.   Also, for a while we tried HALF.COM. It didn't produce much results and we dropped it after a couple of years.   In May 2009 AMAZON told us we can no longer mark books as "collectible". We looked into it and found they have two levels of dealers: experienced, professional collectible bookdealers and everybody else. They told us we were excluded because of our low level of feedback. I guess we'll just have to sell more books. On January 05, 2010 they reconsidered and decided to approve us as a collectible dealer.

         In December 2007 we joined BIBLIO. This is the site we now promote. Here we have the most control over the appearance of our listings.

         This site is hand built in HTML. But we got behind when the rest of the web went to CSS. Now, in early 2010, we are learning CSS and are converting the whole site away from FONTS.   Finally.   We are standardizing our main typeface as ARIAL with the footers as VERDANA. The headers are CENTURY GOTHIC. We also like HUMANIST521 BT and GILL SANS.