AbeBooks Europe GmbH has acquired the business assets of ZVAB.com, a Germany-based online marketplace for collectors of rare books.
More than 3000 antiquarians from 27 countries use this site that counts 35 million used, antiquarian, and out-of-print books in a variety of different languages. This deal will be finalized in the second quarter of 2011.
The press release has this quote from ZVAB founder Bernd Heinisch: “The combination of ZVAB and Abebooks creates broader opportunity and faster functionality enhancements for our company. Our goals remain the same: more orders, more functionality and outstanding customer service.”
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Amazon.com is purchasing AbeBooks. As a long-time industry-watcher, I think this is pretty big news, certainly the most significant acquisition in the online used/rare book space to date—and yet not a lot may change.
AbeBooks will join the list of standalone Amazon.com subsidiaries, including Audible, shopbop.com, the Internet Movie Database, and Digital Photo Review.
When AbeBooks acquired BookFinder.com, there was some concern from well-wishers that they’d shut us down or make us skew our results—but neither happened, or was even an option. We’re still a small independently-managed operation, but now with more resources to draw upon.
It’s interesting seeing AbeBooks go through the same process as we did, but with Amazon.com. I know enough about the deal to be very confident that AbeBooks will follow a similar model: being run independently, but with the ability to draw on Amazon.com for help when they need it. And as for BookFinder.com? For better or for worse, the change doesn’t impact us at all. (Though personally, I wouldn’t mind if we got some free Audible subscriptions out of all this.)
Have questions? Post them below, and I’ll see if I can get some answers next week.
Michael at Book Patrol just posted a reasonably interesting interview with AbeBooks CEO Hannes Blum.
The interview hits on a pretty wide range of issues, including dealer pricing. (Obligatory shill alert: we’re an independently-operated subsidiary of AbeBooks.)
ChrisLands, a service that offers white-label ecommerce websites for booksellers, has been acquired by Canadian book marketplace AbeBooks.
We’ve known Lance and Jim from ChrisLands since their days running Bookopoly, an online marketplace they ran from 1999 to 2003. Congrats, guys.
The ChrisLands team will remain at their current location near Washington, DC. They’ll be following the same model as us. BookFinder.com was acquired by AbeBooks two and a half years ago, but we remain an independently managed subsidiary. We’ve enjoyed being able to draw upon AbeBooks’ resources, treating them as a consulting firm we can call upon as needed (e.g. we brought in their designers to help us do a big visual redesign). I expect ChrisLands will be able to do the same.
Canada-based marketplace AbeBooks has an AbeBooks.ca Canadian microsite now, along the lines of the Abebooks.com.au and Abebooks.co.nz sites.
Charlie and I laughed when we discovered the microsite — shouldn’t a Canadian company have a full-on Canadian site? This is what happens when your home market is one-tenth the size of your neighbor; I presume the same dynamic applies to Austrian companies with large German customer bases. It helps that Austria and Germany share a single currency, though I suppose it’s gotten much easier for Canadians to shop at US dollar-denominated ecommerce sites ever since the two currencies hit parity.
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