By Michael Stillman

Online listing site Biblio and bookselling software developer Bibliopolis announced a rollout of free BookHound 7ce software. This is inventory management and book listing software designed to streamline the operation of both bricks and mortar and online bookstores. It enables the bookseller to upload inventory to many different listing sites. The software is being offered by this partnership free of charge, with no requirement to list on Biblio's site or any other obligations.

In a recent release, Bibliopolis co-founder Alan Green was quoted as saying, "The availability of software for booksellers that is both free, full-featured, and Mac and Windows compatible has always been limited; we're happy that Biblio.com can see to it that our product reaches anyone who needs it in the bookselling community."

In June, the partners made the software available to Apple computer users, a small though often more technology savvy part of the market, as something of a test run. While the percentage of booksellers who use the Apple operating system is unknown, overall their market share is somewhere in the vicinity of 5%, leaving most of the rest to Microsoft and its Windows operating system. Available now are versions of BookHound that will work with both Windows XP and Vista, along with Apple's OS X.

Biblio indicated it was quite pleased with the reaction of Apple users to the offer. They said that there have been "several hundred" downloads of this version already. Biblio estimated that it may have been downloaded by as many as 30% of the bookstores who use the Apple operating system, a number that sounds to us a bit ambitious, but they do appear to be off to a good start. Biblio is expecting similar results with the Windows version, with their CEO Brendan Sherar predicting, "Seeing BookHound 7ce reach an overall market saturation of 40% by year's end is quite possible." Again this strikes us as ambitious with several other versions of bookselling and listing software available, both free and paid, including AbeBooks' free HomeBase. Apple users may have responded disproportionately to BookHound as HomeBase does not work with their computers. Nevertheless, this type of software is a virtual necessity for anyone in the book business, certainly the online book business today, so perhaps Biblio's expectations will be met.

For our article last month on the earlier launch of the BookHound software, go to: Biblio offers free inventory management/uploading software.

To download a copy of the BookHound 7ce software, go to www.bookhound.net.