TomFolio.com Book Dealer Co-op Now in its 13th Year - An Uphill Struggle to Make it Work

Henry Hain of Henry F. Hain III - Bookseller in Harrisburg, PA is current TomFolio president. In his view one of the “most attractive features of TF is the independence it offers each dealer to operate his/her business within the bounds of our Code of Ethics, and our desire to communicate directly with our customers.”

He went on to give number reasons to join TomFolio: These included:

Your Own Terms: TomFolio is set up to keep you independent. You set your own shipping fees, your own currency conversion rates, your local tax rates, your preferred types of payment, and any other terms and conditions. TF does not interfere with your transactions.

Static Pages: Because Google is currently the primary search engine on the net, and because it and most other search engines are unable to search text inside a database, TF has been programmed to generate static pages on which the entire inventory is listed. These pages, which are automatically updated several times a week, attract Google's indexing utility and thus allow TF data to appear high in Google searches.

No "Content Police": Unlike the corporate websites where your items are suppressed if you use "wrong" words in the descriptions, there are no filters on TomFolio. We also do not cut off long descriptions, so you can feel confident that your painstaking and thorough cataloging efforts will not go to waste.

Category System/ Niches: TomFolio has a two-tiered drill-down category system (easily browsable). Customers appreciate the ease with which they can find, for example, cat mysteries, juvenile series for girls, and other specific types of books.

Your Own Webpage: TomFolio provides a free webpage to each member. There are also several optional features.