AbeBooks Help Center

This page outlines best practices for booksellers to have their inventory included in Collections and to utilize Collections as a selling tool. Only listings with both an associated catalog and at least one associated image will be considered for Collections. The tips below will help you give your Collections the most exposure to potential buyers on AbeBooks.

› Click here to browse Collections

› Visit our FAQ for more general information on Collections

Sorting Your Inventory Into Catalogs

Bookseller catalogs on AbeBooks are groups of listings of unique to your store, created by you, to classify & segment your inventory. You can think of it like organizing a bookstore into different genres and sections of inventory. Your catalogs are displayed on your AbeBooks Storefront, where buyers can use them to browse your inventory.

› Learn more about managing catalogs with AbeBooks

Important tips for the catalog name you pick:

• The catalog name must be at least 3 characters
• The catalog name may only contain letters (a-z and A-Z), numbers, (0-9), and following symbols: Dot (.), Hyphen (-), Round brackets (“(“, “)”), Apostrophe (‘)
• Collections will reject catalog names which are composed of only numbers.
• Collections will also reject catalog names which contain a mix of both letters and numbers unless it indicates a decade, a date, or a century. Some examples of valid catalog names are: 1920s, The Mid 80s, 19th Century, Fahrenheit 9/11, 18. Jahrhundert, and 1990er Jahre.
• Use a concise, yet descriptive, name. For example: “Post-1940 Fiction” is better than “Fiction”; “World War II” is better than “ww2”.
• Use catalog names that buyers will know and understand or terms that someone interested in a specific topic would recognize. Avoid classifications that only have meaning to you, such as ‘Catalog 1’ or ‘Sylvia’s Books.’
• Do not add more than one subject into a catalog name (eg. ‘History:Art:Roman’)

Important tips for the listings inside your catalogs:

• In each qualified catalog, we only select listings that have an image.
• There must be a minimum of 6, qualified listings in your catalog for the catalog to be considered for Collections.
• Each catalog should contain unique listings. In other words, avoid having multiple listings that are identical in image, title, author, and price within the same catalog.

Adding Great Images

For a listing to be valid for Collections, it must have at least 1 associated image.  We prefer to use an image that you provide but if that’s not an option, we will try to look for a stock image in our repository using the listing’s ISBN (if there’s one). We highly recommend to that you provide your own high quality item photos with your inventory.

› Learn more about uploading images and how to take great photos for your listings

› Learn how enabling ISBN matching can generate images for your listings

Using Collections as a Selling Tool

Not only is Collections is an exciting new browse experience, it is also a great tool for you to visually share your unique inventory with your customers. Web addresses (URLs) for your Seller Collections are unique to your inventory.  You may easily copy the URL of one of your Collections from the address bar of your browser and share it with your customers and colleagues.

Suggestions for sharing your Collections:

• Include a link to your Collections in the footer of your emails.
• Share your latest and most exciting Collections on Social Media (Facebook, Twitter etc.).
• Inform your customers about specific Collections that could interest them.