Dear Barnes and Noble,

I take issue with your calculations and I am disheartened and I will be posting this letter to my website along with your reply. According to your report generator my site gave 3,009 impressions with 830 click thrus for a ratio of 2.758% and 0 sales not a cent from May 9th till June 21,1998. According to my statistics I have given your banner 6,184 exposures on my site. Of course, I have to rely on you as to how many times its been clicked on. I have found that many counters do not work properly, your code may be the same way. It appears to me it only counts every two impressions. Which ads up, 3,000 is a long way from 6,000. I also, find it unbelievable that not one person has purchased a book from so many click thru's. It seems I am just giving you Free advertising. My website is very popular among poets and literary webmasters online with over 30,000 hits in two months, I am sure they would appreciate an answer why a popular site like mine can't make a dime. Sincerely, David Doherty webmaster@poem.org

-- David Doherty (webmaster@poem.org), June 22, 1998

Answers

Christa,

1.) I did use the tag generator. Maybe it worked improperly, I will redo it.

2.) Does a customer have to buy from a direct link? what I mean is; if they browse thru your site after clicking thru my banner do I get credit for the sale. This is the Main problem I, and many other webmasters have noticed, with amazon.com for example. you have over 30 different things to link to and searches after linking thru my banner if I only get credit from direct linking there is NO incentive for me. (reference http://greenspun.com on amazon.com ) I raise this point because you suggest direct linking of certain books. My website is hard enough to keep up with besides doing your advertising for you and using more of my webspace for your product without prior compensation. I also realize that if I am feeling disheartened others are too. Especially those personal sites that have few hits. You would be surprised how many people ask me if I've made a dime from your site yet. These same people laughed and said I would never make one red cent, but I am not going to give up just yet.

I will continue to use your banner on my site I will try to fix the tag generated link problem that you say might be at fault and I will continue to post all correspondence to my Lusenet poetry forum for other webmasters to read.

Sincerely, David Doherty webmaster@poem.org

-- David Doherty (webmaster@poem.org), June 25, 1998.

Subj: RE: Poem.org why not poetry? Date: 6/26/98 9:12:29 AM Central Daylight Time From: ctoole@bn.com (Christa Toole) To: DaveLucian@aol.com ('DaveLucian@aol.com')

Hi,

Thank you for your email regarding your site. The subsections of our Fiction category are not set up so that you will be tracked if you link directly to them that is why they are not in the tag generator. You must use the tag generator and link to Fiction and when visitors go to the poetry area from there you will get credit. I recommend doing a keyword link to Poetry with the keyword tag generator which will take you to a list of poetry books in bestselling order.

Please feel free to email me at ctoole@bn.com if you have any questions or comments or if you would like suggestions to help you increase your sales. Check out our new software superstore and our redesign. Best of luck with your bookstore!

Sincerely, Christa Toole =================================================================== Christa Toole | Account Executive, Affiliate Network barnesandnoble.com | (e) ctoole@bn.com http://www.barnesandnoble.com | AOL Keyword: barnesandnoble ===============================================================

-----Original Message----- From: DaveLucian@aol.com [SMTP:DaveLucian@aol.com] Sent: Thursday, June 25, 1998 6:12 PM To: Christa Toole Subject: Poem.org why not poetry?

Christa,

Also, why do I need to link to fiction instead of poetry. I have a poetry web site not a fiction website. people come to my site looking for Yeats not Captain Kirk.

Thanks, David Doherty

----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from rly-zb03.mx.aol.com (rly-zb03.mail.aol.com [172.31.41.3]) by air-zb01.mail.aol.com (v45.8) with SMTP; Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:12:29 -0400 Received: from mseisc1.barnesandnoble.com ([208.238.124.72]) by rly-zb03.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with ESMTP id KAA17821 for ; Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:12:28 -0400 (EDT) Received: by MSEISC1 with Internet Mail Service (5.5.1960.3) id ; Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:19:50 -0400 Message-ID: <75639C4174B7D111AD2100805FEA294849F97C@MSEISC1> From: Christa Toole To: "'DaveLucian@aol.com'" Subject: RE: Poem.org why not poetry? Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:19:46 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.1960.3) Content-Type: text/plain

-- Christa Toole (ctoole@bn.com), June 27, 1998.

Subj: RE: Poem.org: statistics do not gell Date: 6/26/98 9:07:27 AM Central Daylight Time From: ctoole@bn.com (Christa Toole) To: DaveLucian@aol.com ('DaveLucian@aol.com')

Hi,

Thank you for your email regarding your links. I have responded in your email below.

Please feel free to email me at ctoole@bn.com if you have any questions or comments or if you would like suggestions to help you increase your sales. Check out our new software superstore and our redesign. Best of luck with your bookstore!

Sincerely, Christa Toole =================================================================== Christa Toole | Account Executive, Affiliate Network barnesandnoble.com | (e) ctoole@bn.com http://www.barnesandnoble.com | AOL Keyword: barnesandnoble ===============================================================

-----Original Message----- From: DaveLucian@aol.com [SMTP:DaveLucian@aol.com] Sent: Thursday, June 25, 1998 5:48 PM To: Christa Toole Subject: Re: Poem.org: statistics do not gell

Christa,

1.) I did use the tag generator. Maybe it worked improperly, I will redo it. Your poetry link is linking to an area we do not have on the tag generator, that is why I said that.

2.) Does a customer have to buy from a direct link? what I mean is; if they browse thru your site after clicking thru my banner do I get credit for the sale. The link will track them wherever they go on our site however. You will get commission on everything they buy even if they surf around for a while.

This is the Main problem I, and many other webmasters have noticed, with amazon.com for example. you have over 30 different things to link to and searches after linking thru my banner if I only get credit from direct linking there is NO incentive for me. (reference http://greenspun.com on amazon.com ) I raise this point because you suggest direct linking of certain books.

I just thought this would add some interest and value to your readers and give them more incentive to buy.

My website is hard enough to keep up with besides doing your advertising for you and using more of my webspace for your product without prior compensation. I also realize that if I am feeling disheartened others are too. Especially those personal sites that have few hits. You would be surprised how many people ask me if I've made a dime from your site yet. These same people laughed and said I would never make one red cent, but I am not going to give up just yet. I did think that it was rather unusual that you had had no sales with so many clickthroughs. Then I realized that you were linking to an untracked area which explained it. I do believe that you will be able to generate some sales with properly tracked links. Also, a little more integration and more traffic would help increase sales as well. We have had quite a few very successful sites.

I will continue to use your banner on my site I will try to fix the tag generated link problem that you say might be at fault and I will continue to post all correspondence to my Lusenet poetry forum for other webmasters to read.

Sincerely, David Doherty webmaster@poem.org

----------------------- Headers -------------------------------- Return-Path: Received: from rly-za02.mx.aol.com (rly-za02.mail.aol.com [172.31.36.98]) by air-za01.mail.aol.com (v45.8) with SMTP; Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:07:27 -0400 Received: from mseisc1.barnesandnoble.com ([208.238.124.72]) by rly-za02.mx.aol.com (8.8.8/8.8.5/AOL-4.0.0) with ESMTP id KAA14885 for ; Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:07:26 -0400 (EDT) Received: by MSEISC1 with Internet Mail Service (5.5.1960.3) id ; Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:14:49 -0400 Message-ID: <75639C4174B7D111AD2100805FEA294849F97B@MSEISC1> From: Christa Toole To: "'DaveLucian@aol.com'" Subject: RE: Poem.org: statistics do not gell Date: Fri, 26 Jun 1998 10:14:41 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.1960.3) Content-Type: text/plain

-- Christa toole (ctoole@bn.com), June 27, 1998.

Subj: RE: Poem.org: statistics do not gell Date: 6/25/98 4:31:52 PM Central Daylight Time From: ctoole@bn.com (Christa Toole) To: DaveLucian@aol.com ('DaveLucian@aol.com')

Hi,

Thank you for your email regarding your statistics. The reason that you have not seen any sales is because the link on your main page was not created with the tag generator. As our instructions say, links must be created with the tag generator or they will not be tracked. You will have to use the keyword tag generator or link to our Fiction category (with the category tag generator) to get credit.

If you would like, we could get a collection of books together for you to feature on your site which you can link to (with the tag generator of course) and generate some sales as well. Let me know what I can do to help.

Please feel free to email me at ctoole@bn.com if you have any questions or comments or if you would like suggestions to help you increase your sales. Check out our new software superstore and our redesign. Best of luck with your bookstore!

Sincerely, Christa Toole =================================================================== Christa Toole | Account Executive, Affiliate Network barnesandnoble.com | (e) ctoole@bn.com http://www.barnesandnoble.com | AOL Keyword: barnesandnoble ===============================================================

-----Original Message----- From: DaveLucian@aol.com [SMTP:DaveLucian@aol.com] Sent: Monday, June 22, 1998 6:34 PM To: Christa Toole Subject: Poem.org: statistics do not gell

-- Christa Toole (ctoole@bn.com), June 25, 1998.