The dealer directory: one public page per bookseller, written by the bookseller, with an email address that never appears on it. For the Dealer plan.
What It Is
A collector looking for a dealer in Antwerp who handles early travel books has no good way to find one. Association lists are national and alphabetical, search engines return marketplaces, and the dealer who would have had the book never hears about it.
The directory is Shelvd's answer: a page for each bookseller that says who they are, what they deal in, where they can be visited and how to reach them. Nothing on it comes out of your collection. There are no titles, no stock and no valuations in the directory — it is about the shop, not the shelves.
Your Profile
You fill the profile in under Settings → Public profile. The fields are the ones a collector actually decides on:
- Who you are. Business name, city, country, the year you started.
- How to visit. Open shop, by appointment, or fairs only, with your opening hours if you keep them.
- What you deal in. Up to twelve specialisms from a fixed list, the periods you cover, the languages you work in, and one free field for what the list misses.
- How you sell. How often you issue catalogues, your website and your telephone number.
- Your associations. ILAB, ABA, SLAM, CLAM/BVAB, NVvA, VDA, ABAA, ALAI, with your membership number.
The lists are fixed on purpose. Twenty dealers typing "travel", "voyages", "reisverhalen" and "Travel & Exploration" make a guide nobody can filter.
What Stays Private
Your email address is never on the page. A collector writes through a form; Shelvd sends you the message with their address as the reply-to. From your first reply you correspond directly and Shelvd is out of it.
Your street address is optional. By default the page shows your city and country. Tick the box and the full address appears — which is what you want with a shop, and not what you want with a private house.
Your collection stays yours. The directory reads nothing from your books, your documents, your valuations or your catalogues.
Claimed and Verified
Shelvd cannot check an association membership automatically, so the page prints what you entered as a claim. Once someone at Shelvd has checked it against the association's own register, the same line carries a mark and reads as verified. The difference is deliberate: a badge that anybody can award themselves is worth nothing to the collector reading it.
Publishing
Saving and publishing are two different buttons. A half-written profile is never the one strangers read.
The first time you publish, the profile goes to Shelvd for a look. That check is about the obvious things — a real business, no third party's contact details in the description, no marketplace link farm — and not about your prose. After that first approval you publish your own edits, immediately and without asking.
Taking the page down is always one click away. Unpublish and the page is gone. If Shelvd takes a profile down, you see the reason on your own profile screen.
When the Guide Opens
The list of dealers stays closed until eight profiles are published, and search engines are told to ignore it until then. A directory of one dealer reads as though it is the whole trade, which is worse for that dealer than no directory at all. Individual profiles are public from the first one, so your own page works before the list does.
What Happens When…
- You change plans. The public profile needs the Dealer plan. On a lower plan the page leaves the directory; the profile itself is kept, and it comes back when you upgrade.
- Your account is suspended. The profile leaves the directory with it.
- You get too much mail. A profile accepts at most ten messages an hour and the same sender at most three, so nobody can flood your inbox through the form.
- Someone abuses a profile. Every page carries a line to report it, and Shelvd can take a profile offline with a reason the dealer sees.
See also: Cataloging to Sell · The Catalog Generator · Tiers and Plans · Settings Guide