Product Trends Magazine

About the company: “Founded in 1961 as the book division of Time Inc., by 1966, Time-Life had combined its book offerings with music collections and packaged them as a sturdy box set. Throughout the ’70s and ’80s, the selection of books, music, and then video grew, diversifying into all genres. Today, Time-Life is one of the world’s pre-eminent creators and direct marketers of unique book, music, video/DVD, and multimedia products. The Time-Life name is one of the most recognized and trusted brands in existence today.”

The big pitch: A leader in the sale of music and video products, the Time-Life brand offers great value for quality entertainment products.

You are up late one night watching television and you come across a commercial for Time-Life music or video products, and wanted to order but didn’t get the number down in time. Hey, it happens - but now, Time-Life has created a website that you can visit and review all of the music, videos, and other product that they offer, without the need to dig behind the couch cushions for a pen that works.

How do you find that product you saw on television? Easy - just click on the “As Seen on TV" icon on the home page, category pages, and product pages throughout the site, to find the products advertised on TV. You can also search for the product that you are looking for by using the empty search box option that appears on every page. Just enter the product name and hit go, and all of the products will come up.

Want to listen to some of the music before purchasing? That option is also available on the site. If your product includes music CDs, you can listen to a 30-second sample of almost any song you choose - just click the song you want and it will play right there on your PC speakers.

Ultimately, Time-Life is the home of the various artists’ box set. With titles such as Legends: Ultimate Rock, Lifetime of Romance, and Classic Soul Ballads, you know pretty quickly what you’re in for. I mean, there’s just no confusing Superstars of the 80’s as being anything more than a collection of songs by the likes of Billy Ocean, Cyndi Lauper, Rick Springfield, Fine Young Cannibals and Huey Lewis and the News. But what may surprise is just how huge these box sets are. The Superstars of the 80’s set, for example, boasts discs for every genre - ten of them, in fact. In essence, with just one of these box sets, you could be purchasing enough music to get you from Jacksonville Florida to Spokane Washington without ever hearing the same song twice, or having to fiddle with a radio dial.

The video side of things is even more impressive, with DVDs of entire runs of classic TV shows, from Columbo to Murder She Wrote, Hee Haw to Second City Television. Even better, Time-Life regularly lists items for sale in their ‘clearance’ department, with prices dropping from the usual $16.99 to as little as $5.99. In addition, if you buy more items, you earn big discounts - buy 3 and get 10% off, buy 6 and get 15% off, or buy 9 and get a whopping 20% discount. That’s great stuff.

Customer Service is a number one priority for Time-Life. They are there for you before, during, and well after your purchase to answer any questions you may have, and to assure you are happy with our products and service. You have three ways of getting to customer service: Call Toll-Free: 1-800-950-7887. Call between 8 a.m. and 10 p.m., ET, Monday through Friday, and Saturday between 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., except holidays. Send an email using the customer service form provided on the website, or if you prefer the age old methods, mail ‘em a letter.

If customer service matters to you, then Time-Life has our heartiest recommendation. When I called and asked various questions about the products, they were very helpful and easy to speak with. The return policy is fair and clear to the customers.

The Product Trends rating: If fast, quick and quality entertainment products are what you are looking for, then Time-Life products are for you. Five stars. —Reviewed by Denise Seegobin

To try Time-Life for yourself, click the image below:

About the company: AbeBooks makes it simple and safe to find and buy—or list and sell—new, used, rare, and out-of-print books online. Book buyers love the variety of over 70 million books offered by more than 13,000 booksellers. This great selection delivers value for all: readers find bestsellers, collectors find rare books, students find textbooks, and treasure hunters find books they’ve been seeking forever.

The big pitch: The best deals on new and used textbooks, free shipping, no minimum purchase.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past dozen years, you’ve undoubtedly heard of Amazon.com and its ilk. Amazon grew from Jeff Bezos’ garage into a multi-billion dollar operation during the internet bubble in the late 90’s, and when others crashed and burned, Amazon stayed (barely) alive by virtue of its huge customer base.

Well, Amazon may be many things, but ‘the only alternative’ is not one of them. In the past few years several companies have waged war on the book giant’s dominance, and as the market leaders diversify into toys and power tools, the true book sellers have been building their stock in trade from the ground up.

AbeBooks is one such company. A book marketplace where booksellers from around the world can hawk their wares of new, used, rare, out of print and textbooks, this company charges the sellers a set flat fee as a ‘membership’ each month, which allows them to see as much as they want, to whomever they want, without limitation. Contrast that to Amazon, where the marketplace sellers pay no subscription fee, but have set postage and handling fees that rule them out of doing any business with overseas buyers, and you begin to see where the big guy is going wrong.

To try AbeBooks out for ourselves, we did a search for books by Hunter S. Thompson, and not only found several rare titles from that author for a few dollars each, we actually found one book selling for as little as a dollar.

That’s right - $1.

AbeBooks understands that Amazon’s independent sellers have precious few checks on the quality of the product being sold, so they’ve developed a system where timewasters and fly-by-nighters just aren’t likely to hang around. By charging a membership fee to sellers, you eliminate scammers and frauds, because it’s much easier for them to ply their trade elsewhere - where they don’t have to pay for the privilege.

Selling your textbooks? You can do that through AbeBooks, by virtue of a partnership with Buyback.com, where you simply enter the ISBN number of the book you want to sell, then their system gives you the price they’re willing to pay. If you accept, you send the book in, they pay for the postage (within the US), and they’ll send you a check.

Looking for a book club? AbeBooks has that too, with a free membership allowing you to talk about the books of the month online with other users.

Looking for a line on a cheap Harry Potter book? No problem - you can get as new copies of the latest Potter release for just $9.53, as of the time of writing. Looking for a first edition? Just click the ‘first edition’ link. Maybe you’re after a signed copy? That’s no problem either, with ten different signed copies available when we checked.

If boy wizards don’t interest you, how about the book everybody is reading - the DaVinci Code - which you can buy in good condition for $4.67, or signed by the author, Dan Brown, for $125.00?
There are many things we like about AbeBooks, from the free shipping to the easy as pie search facility, to the tendency towards supplying not just cheap copies of books, but also rare copies, first editions, out of print texts and new and used school text books. This is a book community for people who love books, and who want more than just the latest copy of the South Beach Diet - they want a great read.

The Product Trends rating: Four and a half stars - Take a look for yourself, and see what the little guys in the book business are doing that puts Amazon to shame.

To try AbeBooks for yourself, click the image below: