Books etc website crashes after two days

Books etc, an online book retailer that rose from the ashes of the Borders chain has taken its site down less than 48 hours after its launch.

Blaming unexpectedly high traffic, the site backed by Capital Organisations now carries a holding page reassuring customers that “Any purchases made since we launched the site on Monday 22nd February will be honoured and any new registrations made will also have been logged ok."

Following the collapse of Borders, Capital Oragnisations paid a rock bottom price for its 1.3 million customer database. The relaunched site bore similarities to Amazon and was launched with a fanfare. Almost immediately, users complained about slow search results and problems registering on the site.

The responsibility for running the site went to Legend Press – a company previously criticised for its ill-fated self-publishing collaboration with peer review site YouWriteOn.

Tom Chalmers, e-commerce director and Legend Press publisher, said: "I guess we were quite conservative with what we expected, but we have been inundated since we launched. So we are just ramping up all the support side of the site - we thought it would be best to do it now

"It's a bit of a pain in the first week, but we are getting so much traffic we thought it would make sense."

The site remains offline.