Lets take a look a the big ones first, however, these are not the only bookseller that offers a good associate program. Check out the other sites listed below as well. Some not only offer you a percentage of sales as does Amazon.com, but they also pay on all sales made on their site by your referral (and not just the title you referred initially). Be carefull with this, what happens is that when you make a referral to Amazon.com and the person buys a $30.00 book and then goes on to buy three others books for a total of $100 You get only 15% on the first $30.00 book, or $4.50. On the other sites, you'd have been paid 8% of $100.00, or $8.00. So you need to decide how you think your customers will respond when they link from your site to the Internet bookstore of your choice. If they will buy only one book, then Amazon.com should be your choice (provide the referred book is one of the select 300,000 that Amazon.com pays 15% on). If you think your customers will buy four or five titles, then one of the other bookstores would pay you more.

Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com) — This is the largest of the Internet booksellers, with 2.5 million titles in its database (since it just added 1 million out-of-print titles, which it will do searches for). Located near Seattle, Washington. They pay an 15% commission on sales of specific titles referred to them by your web site, but not on any additional sales generated from that customer. They also encourage people to submit reviews of any books on their site. Check out their Associates Program for details on selling books via linking your site to their site. Note: Amazon.com is now offering 15% commission on the top 400,000 titles and 5% on 1.2 million other titles that Amazon.com stocks. Check out also Amazon.com's tips on How to Build a Great Bookstore. Click here.

Barnes and Noble (BarnesandNoble.Com): promises 5% commission on books and magazines and 1.5% on software. I found some good features and very few drawbacks in this affiliate program, and I might recommend consider this program -- but not unless Barnes and Noble apologizes for its unrepentant use of junk email and promises not to send junk email spam in the future. The company refuses to apologize and says it can send unsolicited commercial email to anyone it chooses. Therefore, I urge you to BOYCOTT BARNES AND NOBLE! (BarnesAndNoble.Com demands to be the "exclusive" bookstore at your site, and prohibits you from even carrying paid ads for other book vendors; I think this means that you cannot participate in any ad network that does not allow you to block ads from book vendors.)

Books Now, The Virtual Bookstore (http://www.booksnow.com) — Established in 1994, this site features over 400,000 titles searchable by author, title, or ISBN. Located in Las Vegas, Nevada. Like Amazon.com, they pay an 8% commission on any sales you refer to them; unlike Amazon.com, they pay on all sales made on the site by your referral (and not just the title you referred). Check out their PartnerPlus Promoter Program for details. If you have a larger, active web site with high volume traffic, Books Now will design, build, and maintain a bookstore for you.

For more information, contact Books Now, Las Vegas NV; 702-258-3338; 800-962-6651.

Booksmith (http://www.booksmith.com) — This independent San Francisco bookstore features about 45,000 titles. They provide bookstore sales for several sites as well as bookstore connections for many other associates. They pay 10% of every sale. In the past six months, they've sold at least $1,000 worth of books for one site they manage for cartoonist Winsor McCay. One of the sites they work with, CareGuide (http://www.careguide.net) formerly worked with Amazon.com but quit when they found Amazon “too inflexible.” For more information about their web sales associates program, contact Thomas Gladysz via e-mail: thomasg@pandorasbox.com.

CBooks Express (http://www.cbooks.html) — This Internet computer bookstore stocks thousands of computer books — “every computer book known.” They pay a flat $10.00 commission for each new customer who makes a purchase via their site. For more information, contact CBooks Express, 1308 Orleans Drive, Sunnyvale CA 94089; 408-541-2020; 800-789-8590; Fax: 408-752-9919. E-mail: contact-us@cbooks.com.

Cherry Valley Books (http://www.cherryvalleybooks.com) — This children's bookstore features only books for children and parents. As of March 1998, they began to carry any children's or parenting title — more than 60,000 titles. Their associate program pays 8% on all book sales referred from your site. A nice touch: They provide links back to your site both at the referring page as well as the final thank you page after an order is completed. They individually approve each site. For more information on their associate programs, send e-mail to custserv@tesser.com.

A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books (http://www.bookstore.com) — This well-regarded independent Bay area bookstore stocks 90,000 titles.They currently provide book ordering for the Bukowski pages at http://www.realbeer.com, where they sell about 30 books per month. If you have an author-related site and would like them to provide a similar service for your books, contact them at: authors@bookstore.com.

The Internet Bookshop (http://www.bookshop.co.uk) — Located in England, this was the Internet's largest bookstore before Amazon.com came along. Features 894,000 titles. Detailed info on many books is offered. They also offer a Partnership Program (for details, e-mail: pp@bookshop.co.uk. One opportunity with this shop is that it is located in England. Hence, you can serve any European visitors to your site as well as any American visitors. Their program just started up in April, 1997. To sign up, link to http://www.bookshop.co.uk/pp/linkandearn.htm. Note that they have a related site that sells music tapes and CDs. If you want to sell such items, check out: The Internet Musicshop (http://www.musicshop.co.uk).

Computer Literacy Bookstore (cbooks.com) Promises $10 for each new customer who buys a book. Although this "sounds too good to be true," the company has been in business for many years and has an excellent reputation. Recommended for sites with computer programming and other technical themes.

Books.com / Cendant (formerly "Book Stacks" / CUC) - offers 12% commission on all book sales. Books.com has a "price comparison" feature that lets you see the Amazon and Barnes and Noble prices for a book, and if the Books.com price was higher, the price will be instantly reduced to 1% below the competitor's price. Recommended because 12% is the best commission rate offered by any book vendor, unless your site is devoted to a single book or author (in which case Amazon's program might pay more)

Powell's Bookstore Promises 10% commission, but the online affiliate signup form does not work.

A1 Books Promises 10% commission on all sales.

Alt.Bookstore Promises 10% commission on "all orders" from any customer who originated from your site -- but only "qualifying books" earn commissions, and this term is vaguely defined as: "anything we list at between 10% and 30% discount. This typically includes about 400,000 of the most popular titles. Special order books, special promotional and zero discount titles are examples of books which do not qualify."

SpeedServe/BookServe/VideoServe Promises up to 10% commission on sales of "readily available" books, and 5% on all other products (including videos, laser discs, DVDs, and video games).

Bookpages (UK)"Branch Scheme" promises 8% cash commission (or 10% store credit) on all books sold. Note: Bookpages was acquired by Amazon.com in May 1998.

Cherry Valley Books Promises 8% commission on all book purchases by visitors from your site. (Emphasizes books for children and young adults, and about parenting, with reviews of each book)

Check out the sites, see what their programs offer, see how your site would fit in, and sign up. Then sell, sell, sell!