Books

When selling via bol, you must comply with the 'Fixed Book Price Act'. If a publisher has registered with the Dutch Media Authority, it is legally required for a (web)store to adhere to that fixed price. Therefore, it is not allowed to sell below this price. It is possible to charge a higher price, but only to include shipping costs.

You can check the fixed book price here.

Please note: schoolbooks and foreign-language books are excluded from the Fixed Book Price Act.

Assigning a (sub)category to books is done using theme codes. The category is therefore always set to 'Book'. The values entered for the attributes, or product characteristics, 'Theme Qualifier Code' and 'Theme Subject Code' determine which subcategory a book will appear in online.

If you're wondering which codes apply to your book, you can look them up here.

Most publishers register their books with Centraal Boekhuis (CB) and distribute them in this way throughout the entire book landscape for sales in the Netherlands and Belgium. CB uses an API connection with the bol system. Therefore, if a book is registered with CB, all content will be supplied from there.

If you notice that the content for your items is incorrect, always check with your publisher whether the items are registered with CB. If so, the change must be submitted by CB to bol, so please contact CB. It is not possible to process the change via bol. If you self-publish your books, you can adjust the content yourself in your seller account if it's incorrect. If your change is rejected? Please contact Partnerservice.

Offering e-books via bol is exclusively done through our partner Kobo. This means you cannot add your e-books directly via bol.

To sell e-books:

1. Create an account with Kobo Writing Life. You can find more information about this on this page.
2. Upload your e-books via that platform.
3. For questions or support with publishing your e-books, you can contact Kobo Writing Life customer service. Please note: bol does not offer direct support for this, as the entire process runs through Kobo.

If you use AI-generated content for books, we ask you to indicate this in the product specification. At bol, we distinguish between (1) ‘AI-generated books’ and (2) ‘AI-assisted books’.

1. AI-generated books: books where text, photos, or translations are generated by an AI-based tool (e.g., ChatGPT). In other words, if you use an AI tool to create content, it is considered AI-generated, even if substantial edits have been made afterward; and
2. AI-assisted books: where an author has created the content/text themselves and has used an AI-based tool, for example, to identify spelling errors or to brainstorm ideas, but where the author themselves created the text.

For the first category (i.e., AI-generated books), we ask you to indicate this via the product specification: AI-generated. For the second category (i.e., AI-assisted books), it is not necessary to indicate this.

bol is the store for all of us. This means that everyone should be able to shop at bol.com and feel welcome. Therefore, items, including books, that incite hatred, violence, or unequal treatment may be removed from the bol.com platform. At the same time, bol wants to carefully manage freedom of expression and thus support the educational and historical importance of books. In very exceptional cases, we may decide not to sell books or to remove them from our platform. This applies to books that incite discrimination/hatred. For other controversial books, we may decide to provide them with a special label containing additional information for awareness.

bol is not a content expert on the themes described in books. To determine what may be hateful, discriminatory, or antisemitic, bol.com has gathered input from discussions with experts on this topic. This has resulted, among other things, in a framework for books.

It is important that everyone feels welcome with us and not discriminated against by our product range. Our priority is to avoid unnecessarily offending people through stereotyping. Therefore, we ask you to take this into account in the way you promote your items.

• Use the term ‘Piet’ instead of the term ‘Zwarte Piet’.
• Do not use images of people with fully dark makeup; instead, use models with no makeup, partial makeup, or patterned makeup.
• Do not offer items that contain a stereotypical caricature emphasizing skin color or ethnicity, such as Zwarte Piet.

Amazon Kindle e-readers are not compatible with bol's e-book product range. To safeguard the quality of the e-book product range and ensure that the e-book product range remains compatible with the e-readers offered, it is not allowed to offer Amazon Kindle e-readers via our platform.

Second-hand items or margin items can only be offered in the categories books, music, games, and movies. For other categories, you cannot request selling rights. Therefore, it is not possible to offer second-hand items other than books, music, games, and movies via bol.

• As new

  
  In excellent condition, undamaged, and suitable as a gift.

• Good

  
  Shows signs of use but is in good condition. May have a dent or a scratch and slight creases on the spine.

• Fair

  
  Heavily used book, bent spine, folds, scratches, dog-ears, dents, and/or slight discoloration. (No critical damage such as loose, missing pages, tears, markings, or water damage).

If an item's content changes, the EAN generally changes as well. Driving and boating license books are an exception to this. For example, with these books, you can change the title and still use the same EAN. Are you selling packages or bundles? Then it's important to know that you cannot change a package while retaining its EAN. This applies to all bundles via bol. If anything changes about the package, bundle, or book, it is a new item and a new EAN/ISBN must be used.