Channel mix card, flags when Alibris share rises / falls vs sibling book marketplaces.
At a glance
Channel-mix view: Alibris revenue as a percentage of the merchant’s total book-trade marketplace revenue (Alibris + AbeBooks + Amazon Books, summed). Flags when Alibris’s share moves materially up or down month-over-month.
| What it counts | alibris.total_revenue / (alibris.total_revenue + abebooks.total_revenue + amazon_books.total_revenue), computed monthly across the trailing 90 days. Settlement currency normalised. |
| API endpoint + report | Derived. Sums each connected book-trade marketplace’s order revenue per month (gross of commission, before refunds), then computes Alibris’s share. Recomputes daily but presented as 3-month rolling. |
| Fees / commission | Gross of commission. AbeBooks 8%, Alibris 15%, Amazon 15%+; the share calculation uses gross. |
| Refunds | NOT deducted on either side. |
| Cancellations | Excluded everywhere. |
| Currency | Single settlement currency, FX-normalised. |
| What “moves” the share | (1) Alibris listing health (suspensions, failed feeds drop share); (2) sibling marketplace activity (Amazon promo or AbeBooks feature placement); (3) buyer-side platform shift; (4) inventory mix (academic on Alibris, rare on AbeBooks, commodity textbook on Amazon). |
| Healthy share range | Bookseller-dependent. Most multi-marketplace booksellers run Alibris at 12 to 25% share. Outside that range merits strategic review. |
| Concentration risk | Alibris share above 40% on a multi-marketplace seller is concentration risk. Most useful for spotting change not absolute level. |
| Multi-marketplace overlap | The three sibling shares sum to 100%. |
| Time window | 90D (3-month rolling, monthly granularity). |
| Alert trigger | None by default. Add custom alert if your strategic share range is well-defined. |
| Roles | owner, finance, marketing. |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your Alibris data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A US bookseller, 90-day window 02 Feb 26 to 01 May 26, settlement USD. Mixed inventory: 70% commodity, 30% rare/academic.| Month | Alibris revenue | AbeBooks revenue | Amazon Books revenue | Total | Alibris share |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 26 | $15,820 | $35,100 | $17,940 | $68,860 | 23.0% |
| Mar 26 | $17,260 | $36,840 | $18,610 | $72,710 | 23.7% |
| Apr 26 | $16,498 | $37,468 | $18,605 | $72,571 | 22.7% |
| 90-day rolling | $49,578 | $109,408 | $55,155 | $214,141 | 23.1% |
- The 23.1% share is right at the typical band for Alibris. Most multi-marketplace booksellers run 15 to 25% Alibris share; 23% is solidly mid-range. No strategic concern.
- Academic/institutional concentration drives the Alibris share floor. Of the 5,800 came from Library Services institutional buyers averaging $44/order. Without the institutional cohort, Alibris share would drop to ~16%.
- AbeBooks at 51.7% is the dominant marketplace for this seller. Rare-book mix concentrates on AbeBooks; the bookseller’s heavy rare-book inventory pulls AbeBooks share up. A more commodity-tilted catalogue would shift toward Amazon Books.
- Amazon Books at 25.6% is volume-driven. ~800 orders/month at $23 average; Amazon’s Prime delivery and trust tier capture commodity volume Alibris doesn’t.
- Concentration risk: 23% Alibris means 23% of revenue exposure to Alibris-side outage. Below 40% concentration is healthy. The bookseller can pause Alibris for a week (e.g. for credential rotation maintenance) without catastrophic revenue impact.
- The 90-day rolling view dampens seasonal spikes. US back-to-school in Aug-Sep typically pushes Alibris share UP (academic cohort is busiest then) by 2 to 5 percentage points; the 90D window smooths.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
Share of book-trade revenue is the channel-mix view. Pair with these:| Card | Why pair it with Share of Book Revenue |
|---|---|
| Total Revenue | The numerator. |
| Net Revenue | Margin-adjusted view; Alibris’s 15% commission means $1 of share is worth less than AbeBooks’s at 8%. |
| ISBN Drift vs AbeBooks + Amazon | Cause check. |
| Top-Velocity ISBNs Missing on Alibris | Cause check. |
| Suspended Listings | Acute cause check. |
| Listing Quality Score | Leading indicator. |
| AbeBooks Share of Book Revenue | Mirror view. |
| Amazon Books Share of Book Revenue | Mirror view. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in the Alibris seller dashboard: Alibris does not publish a cross-marketplace channel-mix view; this is a Vortex IQ derived metric.- Sellers → Reports → Sales Summary. Cross-check the Alibris numerator.
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Refresh cadence per sibling | Either | Sibling-marketplace data may lag. Wait until day 5 to 7 of each month for reliable monthly comparison. |
| Time zone boundary days | Tiny | Each marketplace uses its own TZ for monthly closes. |
| FX rate per sibling | Tiny | Each marketplace’s own FX rates compound across three. |
| Refund timing | Either | Refund-date allocation differs per marketplace. |
| Sibling not yet connected | Card shares wrong | Two-marketplace setups produce a degenerate denominator. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
abebooks.ab_xc_share_of_book_revenue | Sum to 100%. | Same numerators/denominators with shifted framing. |
amazon.amzn_xc_share_of_book_revenue | Sum to 100%. | Same. |
shopify.total_revenue | Not in denominator by default. | DTC excluded from book-trade marketplace mix. |