New AIDS Bookstore on World Wide Web

Immunet, a nonprofit HIV and AIDS education organization which runs the Web site http://www.immunet.org/, opened an online AIDS bookstore on December 1. This is a valuable resource, both for obtaining AIDS books which otherwise may be hard to find, and as a free research tool to see what is available. As of December 2, this site lists 3,059 AIDS books which can be ordered online, and includes reviews of 547 of them.

This site is also noteworthy as an example of a kind of online business and community structure which we believe will become much more important over the next few years, and which is likely to have other uses in AIDS, including buyers clubs and possibly pharmacies.

How to Use the Site

From the Immunet home page, select the Online Bookstore; most users will then search for books by one or more keywords. As a test, we entered "nutrition" and found 36 books on AIDS and nutrition; a search on "pathogenesis" found 27 books. Most of the books we found have reviews available. You can also search for author by entering a last name as a keyword.

For each book, you can read the review if any, and can obtain ordering information, including price and an estimate of how long it will take to be shipped (usually a few days, but if delivery is likely to be delayed, you know that before placing the order).

The reviews are provided by the AIDS Book Review Journal, of the University of Illinois. Orders are processed and shipped by Amazon.com, a large and well-known online bookstore.

It is no accident that most of the books which were found in our searches do have reviews. This is because the search will examine the title, and also the review if there is one; and it is more likely that the exact word being sought will occur somewhere in a lengthy review of a relevant book, than in the much shorter title. The "nutrition" search, for example, found 24 books that were reviewed and 12 that were not; all of the books that were not reviewed had "nutrition" (or "nutritional") in the title, or they would not have been found. This system works for most users, because presumably the most important books are likely to be reviewed, and yet the others can be found as well.

As of December 2 the list of non-reviewed AIDS books is preliminary and appears to have been computer generated. Suggestions for improvement--especially books that should be listed but are missing--can be sent to Gary Schaff, gschaff@immunet.org, or to Tony Brooks, tbrooks@immunet.org.

Comment: Community Building

A major key to successful Web sites is community building. Large merchandising organizations are seldom good at that. On the other hand, community-based or specialized interest groups are seldom effective at running a large business efficiently (processing orders, shipping books, building relationships with suppliers, etc.); this is not what they want to do. Unlike other media, the World Wide Web allows orders to be passed from the community organization to the merchandiser with zero cost and zero delay.

All the parties can benefit. The community group earns a referral fee for orders it generates (5 to 15%, according to Immunet's press release), without having to process or ship the orders--creating a fundraising tool for organizations. The merchandiser receives orders with guaranteed profit, as there is no up-front cost for advertising or promotion. Customers can use a site built around their needs and interests, and still receive discounts and pay no more than if they placed their orders elsewhere.

Ultimately the negotiating leverage rests with the community organizations, not the merchandisers, even when the latter are much larger entities. For as the online market develops, there will be a number of competing merchandisers, all offering about the same prices and services. A community group can take its business to any of them; there is no "Microsoft effect," no natural monopoly based on a mutual benefit in everybody using the same system. But while merchandisers are generic, each community is unique; whoever brings the people has the controlling advantage. This dynamic can provide some antidote to the increasing centralization and remoteness of modern institutions.
We believe that this kind of arrangement could be important for AIDS or other buyers' clubs--which could offer huge selections at low prices by referring fulfillment of routine orders to selected commercial suppliers, while shipping the most specialized orders themselves.