Abebooks is an online marketplace for books, specialising in rare and out-of-print texts. The company, based in Victoria, Canada and having offices in Düsseldorf was incorporated in 1995 and launched their website in 1996.
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| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 1996 |
| Headquarters | Victoria, British Columbia |
Key people | Hannes Blum, President/CEO Boris Wertz, COO |
| Products | Abebooks.com Abebooks.co.uk Abebooks.de Abebooks.fr Iberlibro.com |
Number of employees | 89 (2005) |
| Parent | Amazon  |
| Website | www.abebooks.com |
At present, they list more than 70 million titles on sale by 13 000 booksellers. Sellers pay a monthly subscription to list their books on the site, ranging from $25 to $300, depending on how many books they list. It is also possible to sell through partner companies such as Amazon and Ebay. The website is available in four country-specific forms: for the United Kingdom, France, Spain and Germany as well as the central '.com' site.
Business model
Abebooks works by bringing together thousands of independent bookstores from around the world and providing a range of services that are usually only available to large corporations. Our services level the playing field, allowing small independent players to compete with bookselling superstores. Buyers who visit Abebooks do not see a single corporate book retailer- instead they see a network of independent booksellers, the vast majority of which are owner-operated, small businesses.
Booksellers upload their inventory data to the Abebooks database, specifying information about each book including condition and price. Booksellers can upload their inventory using their choice of software or our free bookstore management software, HomeBase 2.1, available for download off our website.
Abebooks was one of five companies named by the World Summit Awards in Geneva as among the top e-business sites in 2003 [1].
Partnerships and locations
Abebooks.com operates websites not only for the North America, but also for the United Kingdom, Germany, France. In addition, Iberlibro.com, a spanish language site for books.
Corporate headquarters
Victoria, British Columiba the captial of British Columbia where " a place so green all year that flowers fall out of the sky and even the lamp posts bloom". With the European headquarters located in beautiful Düsseldorf, Germany.
History
Abebooks.com was launched in 1996 with four bookshops and quickly found immediate success by providing booksellers with an affordable means of selling to a worldwide market. Today, over thirteen thousand booksellers list over 70 million titles on Abebooks. The Abebooks team has grown to 100 people working hard to pursue new customers and develop new markets. The acquisition of Germany's JustBooks in 2001 has resulted in the development of Abebooks.de in Germany, Abebooks.fr in France and Abebooks.co.uk in the UK. In 2004 Abebooks acquired Spanish company Iberlibro.com. These localized sites feature language-specific customer service and purchasing elements to support the complete list of titles offered by Abebooks booksellers.
Prestigious organizations such as Forbes Magazine ("best of the best in the rare book category”), the New York Times (“a true Internet success story”), and The Guardian newspaper (“a dotcom chapter of success”) have recognized Abebooks' efforts.
Through strategic partnerships with Amazon, eBay/Half.com and other global resellers, Abebooks has become the most important virtual supplier of used books. With offices in Canada and Germany and services in French, German, Spanish and English, Abebooks has become the world’s leading source for out-of-print and hard-to-find books. And it all began as a scribble on a notepad.
Reseller Partner Programs and Products
Reseller Programs are optional and free for member booksellers to participate in. Participants' book listings are copied from Abebooks to the web sites of partner companies, who in turn present these book listings to their own customers. Partner companies benefit because they can offer their clients a source for out-of-print and hard-to-find books.
Akaikutsu Abebooks partnered with Japan's Akaikutsu, a reseller that is positioning itself to capture a large portion of the Japanese used book market.
Amazon.com Amazon in many of the world's largest bookselling markets to provides Abebooks sellers the option of listing books through the Amazon Marketplace program.
Half.com Founded in July 1999, eBay's Half.com is one of the most visited shopping sites on the Internet.
HomeBase is Abebooks' inventory management software designed with a bookseller's needs in mind. It gives booksellers an easy way to seamlessly upload their books to Abebooks' database and the latest version HomeBase 2.3 features ISBN lookup, to make cataloguing faster and easier.