AbeBooks
| AbeBooks | |
|---|---|
| www.abebooks.de | |
| description | Online marketplace for books |
| languages | German, French, Italian, English, Spanish |
| owner | AbeBooks Inc. |
AbeBooks is an international online marketplace for books . Against commission new and used books between dealers and buyers are taught. The company does not act itself. It generates its profit through a fixed offer fee plus a commission from sales and processing costs for payment via credit cards . AbeBooks has its own websites in Germany, France, Great Britain, Spain, Italy, Australia and New Zealand as well as the United States and Canada. Ulrich Brand has been managing director of the company since the beginning of March 2003. AbeBooks has been a subsidiary of Amazon.com since 2008 .
AbeBooks Europe
AbeBooks Europe was founded in September 1999 under the name "justbooks.de", but has been a subsidiary of the Canadian company AbeBooks Inc., founded in 1995, since October 2001. In October 2004, the Spanish used book platform IberLibro.com was incorporated. Together, the companies offer around 110 million books from over 13,500 independent publishers and employ over 120 people (approx. 30 in Europe and 90 in Canada).
history
1999–2001 JustBooks.de GmbH
JustBooks was founded in September 1999 in Düsseldorf by Hannes Blum, Malte Brettel , Christian Langer, Florian Heinemann and Boris Wertz. The company founders had already noticed during their studies that the specialist books required are often out of stock or not available. An internet platform provided a solution to this problem.
Only a few months passed from the idea to implementation. JustBooks.de was launched just in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 1999. Initially, the young entrepreneurs were financed by business angels who themselves came from the Internet industry. From January 2000, Burda Digital Ventures (now Acton Capital ) supported the aspiring company as a venture capitalist . In October 2000, Burda increased its stake again. The English platform www.justbooks.co.uk was opened at the end of June 2000, and just nine months later (March 2001) JustBooks went onto the market in France at www.justbooks.fr.
In October 2001 JustBooks offered more than 5.3 million books from more than 1000 antiquarians and employed 15 permanent employees. Also in October 2001 it was announced that AbeBooks had taken over JustBooks.de.
1996-2001 Abebooks Inc.
AbeBooks (AbeBooks Inc.) was founded in May 1996 by Rick Pura and Keith and Cathy Waters in Victoria / Canada.
The founding team not only had technical know-how, but also had years of experience in the antiquarian book trade. The idea for AbeBooks arose out of the difficulties of getting rare books for a customer as an antiquarian and exchanging information on book stocks with other antiquarians.
Soon after it was founded, antiquarians and other retailers across North America took advantage of the opportunity to sell their books through the AbeBooks network. The company has grown continuously since then. Through cooperation with Barnes & Noble / USA (1998), Akaikutsu / JAP (June 2000), Chapitre / FR (October 2000) and Biblioquest / AUS (October 2000) AbeBooks has been able to expand its international market position in the last four years.
In October 2001 around 100 permanent employees, around 20 of them in Europe (Düsseldorf, Oviedo) and 85 in North America (Victoria BC, Canada), worked for Abebooks Inc., the company was one of the most successful Canadian internet companies. More than 10,000 independent vendors sold more than 40 million books worldwide through AbeBooks.
2001 to date AbeBooks Inc.
In October 2004, AbeBooks bought IberLibro.com, the Spanish market leader in the online second-hand bookshop.
BookFinder.com, the leading service for price comparison at the time, was taken over in November 2005. BookFinder.com has been active in Europe since September 2006 under the name JustBooks.
In February 2006 AbeBooks acquired FillZ.com, the provider of an online solution for inventory management and order management.
In May 2006, AbeBooks acquired a 40% stake in the social networking platform for books LibraryThing.com .
With Gojaba.com, AbeBooks created a low-price book market in February 2008, initially for Sweden and Russia, and later for Brazil and Poland.
In April 2008 AbeBooks bought the online bookshop operator Chrislands.com.
AbeBooks currently has more than 120 employees in Germany, Canada and the USA.
In late 2008, AbeBooks was acquired by Amazon.com for $ 100 million, but will continue to operate as an independent company. In April 2011 AbeBooks acquired the antiquarian marketplace Central Directory of Antiquarian Books (ZVAB) from mediantis AG .
Protests against withdrawal from Hungary, the Czech Republic, South Korea and Russia
In November 2018, AbeBooks informed booksellers in Hungary , the Czech Republic , South Korea and Russia at short notice that they would no longer be able to sell books through AbeBooks from November 30, 2018. The International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB) protested, mobilized its members and called for a "break" at AbeBooks, which marked around 2.6 million books from more than 460 sellers in 26 countries as "temporarily unavailable". The British Antiquarian Booksellers Association decided not to renew the sponsorship deal with AbeBooks for their annual book fair and issued a protest statement in which they criticized AbeBooks “with a few impersonal sentences, the livelihood of antiquarians in Poland , the Czech Republic, Hungary, Russia and South Korea destroyed «. The withdrawal was subsequently reversed by AbeBooks.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ AbeBooks Europe GmbH
- ↑ Burda Digital Ventures - information, numbers, facts and news. In: deutsche-startups.de. Retrieved on May 2, 2019 (German).
- ↑ abebooks.com buys JustBooks.de. In: golem.de. Golem, October 2001, accessed January 12, 2017 .
- ↑ http://www.boersenblatt.net/294413/
- ↑ Alison Flood: Booksellers unite in protest as Amazon's AbeBooks withdraws from several countries The Guardian , November 6, 2018.