I'm looking for a shopping cart solution that can meet these requirements:

-Good advanced search capabilities (eg: search book title or author or
publisher or ISBN). Results MUST have good relevancy logic (see
below).
-Handles 1000's of products
-Inexpensive ($500 or less)
-Preferably Apache/PHP/MySQL based
-Easy to customize but looks nice out of box (designer nice, not programmer nice!).
-Supports bulk import/export of products, transactions, etc.

Let me explain what won't/hasn't worked so you can get an idea the
obstacles we've faced.
X-cart: using it, need to get rid of it. Showed promise but product
maintenance is tedious, featured products are a huge pain, and search results
have terrible relevancy sorting. Custom work is cheap but cultural
differences between here and Russia make you have to spell out every
tiny detail that you want or it won't happen.
eShox: REALLY promising but no advanced search capability, no
additional product data fields allowed. Looks beautiful, really like
the default designs. Support is questionable since they don't even
reply to presale questions!
Yahoo! Store: Many advantages, good maintenance and development. The
killer is they don't support advanced searches though they do let you
add as many product data fields as you like.

I would like a short list of suggested carts to focus on. Personal
experience is key.

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Request for Question Clarification by hummer-ga on 13 Jan 2005 05:10 PST

Hi brian3636,

Assuming that you are a bookseller, have you considered Chrislands? 

Advanced Search: Yes
Handles 1000s of products: Yes
$199.99 set up fee / $9.99 to $29.99 per month
SQL database.
Easy to customize: Yes
Bulk uploads: Yes
http://www.chrislands.com/

Examples of a dozen active online Chrislands stores:
http://www.chrislands.com/shops/builtstores.php

Please have a look and let me know if a Chrislands store would suit
you or not, or if you have any questions.

Regards,
hummer

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Clarification of Question by brian3636-ga on 18 Jan 2005 06:27 PST

Hummer,
Thanks for the information. Chrislands looks very promising and I
intend to do some in-depth looking at it this week. It certainly seems
like a step in the right direction.

Hi brian3636,

Thank you for your note, I'm glad to hear you like the looks of
Chrislands. We'll leave that as a "first choice" (I've heard nothing
but good reviews from Chrislands booksellers) and add a few more for
you to consider.

1) CHRISLANDS

Advanced Search: Yes
Handles 1000s of products: Yes
$199.99 set up fee / $9.99 to $29.99 per month
SQL database.
Easy to customize: Yes
Bulk uploads: Yes
http://www.chrislands.com/

Examples of a dozen active online Chrislands stores:
http://www.chrislands.com/shops/builtstores.php

note: they will send a feed to Froogle at no extra cost.

2) TOMFOLIO

What other features does TomFolio.com offer?
Credit Card Service:  
"We provide a credit card system that allows you to accept major
credit card payments, even if you do not carry a credit card merchant
account of your own..." but you can use your own merchant account if
you prefer.
Dealer Page:  You will be given a dealer page once you have entered
your information on the site..."
http://www.tomfolio.com/JoinTomFolio.asp

Examples of some TomFolio websites:
://www.google.ca/search?num=100&hl=en&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&q=+%22This+web+page+provided+by+www.TomFolio.com.%22&btnG=Search&meta=

note: also sends to Froogle.

3) BOOKSITE

"BookSite provides a complete online bookstore solution that can be
tailored to your needs. The BookSite Original module can be used as a
stand alone bookstore, or incorporated into your existing site. You
can use the 16 powerful features included in BookSite Original as an
informational and marketing tool with simple order forwarding for as
little as $150/mo."

3 million book database w/cover graphics and descriptions
($350 set-up fee; $150/mo. operating fee)
Easy to Edit Web Page Templates
Shopping Cart with E-mail Order Notification 
http://www.booksite.com/more_booksite.html

4) BIBLIOPOLIS

"Bibliopolis, maker of BookHound? inventory management tools, has
joined with booksellersolutions.com to offer custom database
development and complete e-commerce and web hosting services for
independent booksellers.
Our mission is to help independent booksellers establish, maintain and
grow their internet presence with easy-to-use products and services
that can evolve when the market demands it.
Please send us an email if you are interested in obtaining more
information about our products and services. You can also contact us
by telephone at the numbers below."
http://philo.bibliopolis.com/cgi-bin/biblio/

5) UKBOOKWORLD

This is what the UKBookWorld website service gives you
  # Your own internet shop with either its own unique web address or a
domain name of your choice.
  # A built-in shopping basket with orders going direct to you.  
  # For booksellers who accept credit cards, a built-in secure server
to handle your customers' card details (we don't process the cards on
your behalf; we store the details on our SSL encrypted website for you
to process in your normal manner)
  # No practical limit to the number of books your bookshop can hold
and display - anywhere from 5 to 50,000 titles.
See table of prices further down in the page.
http://www.clique.co.uk/ukbookworld.htm

Additional Link of Interest:

A good forum to browse:
Global Book Town Independent Booksellers
http://p201.ezboard.com/bglobalbooktownindependentbooksellers

BookSense (if you have a physical bookstore):
http://www.bookweb.org/booksense/4695.html

I'm glad I was able to help. If you have any questions, please post a
clarification request before closing/rating my answer and I'll be
happy to reply.

Thank you,
hummer

Search Strategy:
We searched our own bookmarks and also followed links found at various
bookseller websites.

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Clarification of Answer by hummer-ga on 21 Jan 2005 12:34 PST

Hi again brian3636,

Two more ideas -

1) What Is osCommerce?  	  
"osCommerce is an online shop e-commerce solution under on going
development by the open source community. Its feature packed
out-of-the-box installation allows store owners to setup, run, and
maintain their online stores with minimum effort and with absolutely
no costs or license fees involved.
osCommerce combines open source solutions to provide a free and open
e-commerce platform, which includes the powerful PHP web scripting
language, the stable Apache web server, and the fast MySQL database
server.
With no restrictions or special requirements, osCommerce is able to
run on any PHP enabled web server, on any environment that PHP and
MySQL supports, which includes Linux, Solaris, BSD, Mac OS X, and
Microsoft Windows environments."
http://oscommerce.com/

2) Deanna Ramsay does site design, databases and shopping carts for booksellers:
http://www.ramsaybooks.com/design/

I'm sure that I've read somewhere that she designed the IOBA website:

IOBA (Independent Online Booksellers Association):
http://ioba.org/

Your Own Website:
http://www.litterascripta.com/comp/website.shtml

Computers, Software and other Geeky Stuff:
http://www.litterascripta.com/comp/index.shtml

Regards,
hummer

Well it all depends on what you budget is for this. Here is a good one
but the price is a bit steep you can download there 30 day free tria.
If you get back to me with how much you are willing to spend on this
maybe I can help you further.

http://www.webgenie.com/

I'm sure you've search thru freshmeat.net; we've had a lot of success
with the x-cart product; at my company, we probably have a dozen
different clients using some version of this system.
http://freshmeat.net/projects/xcart/