David Karp is a user-interface design consultant and has written extensively on windows applications. He is also a self-confessed “eBay fanatic”. eBay Hacks does not claim to be a book for beginners and indeed, a newcomer to eBay would be much better off reading Jim Griffith's “Official eBay Bible” or other similar work. What Karp’s book does, however, is take the user to the next level of expertise. There are several topics that are explored in-depth in a non-technical way such as how to manage the somewhat esoteric “feedback” process (one of eBay’s ways of self-policing the system and reducing fraud and misrepresentation), how to improve quality of searches for specific items up for auction, how to expand your market as a seller into the international arena etc. There are a few omissions; for example, use of Western Union to expedite international payments and the value of timing auctions such that they end at a time to capture the maximum number of bidders. Otherwise, the book is very comprehensive for an intermediate level user. One frustration is that a non-technical reader will not find it easy to distill this material from the primary content of the book that is a collection of coded examples of how to improve on the eBay toolbox itself.

For the true “hacker readers”, some familiarity with HTML, Java Script and Pearl Script etc. is assumed. There are sections on how to override eBay’s own font set-up, how to replace eBay’s proprietary shipping calculator (cost of shipping items to particular destinations), how to improve on eBay’s record-keeping database and so on. This presupposes that most readers are not happy with the eBay options and that is, of course, not necessarily the case. As an intermediate level user, I have been reasonably satisfied with the eBay tools and it is relatively unlikely that I shall embark on a program to replace their code with my own on my auction sites. The last section concentrates on running a business on eBay and then, of course, the book comes into its own. Irrespective of whether the eBay seller writes his or her own code or employs somebody else to make the enhancements to the site, eBay Hacks has a multitude of advanced techniques that could clearly give the seller a competitive advantage.

Unlike Jim Griffiths, David Karp is not an eBay employee, nor is the book published by them. This gives “EBay Hacks” the advantage that Karp does not have to toe the company line and can give advice that is somewhat in conflict with eBay’s inevitably biased way of doing things. In fact, he comes perilously close on occasions to recommending scenarios that might be construed to be in violation of eBay’s policies and conditions of use. Two things might have enhanced the book’s value. First, a glossary of technical terms would benefit less technically-savvy readers. Second, given the considerable amount of code included, it might have been worthwhile putting this on a supplied CD. This would both eliminate the need to include it on the printed page and also would permit a cut-and-paste option to avoid having to type it all out manually.