QuakerBooks New and Improved
Dueling laptops:Martin Kelley (left) and Steve Beuret (right)—the guys behind QuakerBooks.org.
Left to right: Lucy Duncan holding Simon, Laird Hoby,Graham Garner, Jerimy Peterson and Martin Kelley—the folks behind QuakerBooks of FGC—ready and happy to serve.
QuakerBooks of FGC is a full service bookstore. You can order any book from us by phone, mail, e-mail or directly from our website. Items in our catalog and on the web are almost always in stock and are shipped within 24 hours. Also, you can order any book in print and many out of print and we will send them to you within 2–3 weeks. There is a button on the homepage that allows you to special order books directly from our website You can also special order by phone or e-mail.
Unusual among bookstores QuakerBooks of FGC pays our workers a living wage and full bene- fits. This is almost unheard of in the book trade, but another reason to support FGC by buying all your books from us!
To give you the best service possible FGC applied for and received a generous grant and gifts from a few individuals to update the bookstore website, www.quakerbooks.org. With the fine work of Steve Beuret, consultant, and Martin Kelley, webmaster, the new website is now on-line and working very well. There are many new features of the website.
• More Titles: Because updating the website is simpler, we can now post many more titles than we list in the catalog and post books featured in supplemental catalogs much faster. We have many titles that sell well at the Gathering and yearly meeting book tables, but that aren’t as Quaker focused or don’t sell well enough to feature in our paper catalog—we can now list those on our website and keep a few in stock. We can also list title requested for Gathering workshops, so that folks can pre-order those books.
• Availablility Notices: Because the website is continually updated, we now have availability notices. Next to each title you will see either “in stock,” “low stock,” or “no stock,” so you’ll be better able to know if a book will ship right away. If you do order a book that we don’t currently have in stock, you will be notified immediately when you check out.
• Reader Book Comments: We want the website to serve as a forum for Quaker book lovers, so we’ve added a way to make comments on the books and to read other peoples’ comments. You’ll see that next to each book there is a notice that reads either “Add a comment about this book” or “Read comments about this book.” If you feel strongly about a title on our list, we encourage you to post your thoughts.
• Faster Service: Currently most orders are shipped out within one business day of the time we receive your order. Web orders are now transferred directly into our database, so that they get processed that much more quickly.
Future Features
The new design of the website allows us to change it more easily. Features we plan to add include:
• a page of new titles organized by subject
• a page of bestsellers also organized by subject
• information for meetings about meeting book tables and special event book tables
• a list of essential titles for any meeting library
• new categories for the books listed which will be more intuitive
• information for bookstores which order from us wholesale
Please let us know if you have ideas for improving our website and we’ll see whether we can implement your suggestion.
FGConnections Spring 2003 Home
