In the race of showing that who is the big boss on the internet, taking over the popular internet websites by big internet giants has become a fashion. Another tale added to this series is the latest news in which Abebooks.com, formerly called Advanced Books Exchange has been acquired by Amazon. Found in 1996, Abebooks.com provides the users with some of the most rare and hard to find books on the web world.

At present, Abebooks.com has 110 million books for sale from 13,500 sellers. This Canadian company was the first choice of Amazon that provided users with the most extensive online book collection. Amazon now expects(and thats very obvious) a more larger userbase for itself after acquiring Abebooks.com.

Now a look at the interesting findings by Michael:

AbeBooks owns 40 percent of LibraryThing(a social app for keeping track of your books and finding other like-minded book lovers). Whereas Amazon is an investor in Shelfari.

Also I would like to share the email that CEO (Abebooks.com), Dr. Hannes Blum sent to its book sellers:

Dear Booksellers,

AbeBooks has reached an agreement to be acquired by Amazon.com, Inc. This is a major landmark in the 12-year history of AbeBooks.

AbeBooks will continue to operate as a stand-alone business with all aspects of AbeBooks’ bookseller and customer experience remaining intact. AbeBooks’ headquarters will remain in Victoria, BC, Canada, and our European offices will remain in Dusseldorf, Germany. We will continue to support both our international marketplaces and our domestic marketplace here in Canada. I will continue to lead AbeBooks.

We expect this change to allow AbeBooks to expand its offerings and introduce new features and services to enhance the book buying and selling experience. Amazon is committed to further developing the AbeBooks brand and building upon the success of the past 12 years. This is not the first time AbeBooks has changed hands since being launched in 1996. Hubert Burda Media, a German media company, took a majority shareholding in 2003.

The bookselling community has been a vital component in our success, and we are grateful for your continuing support. We will be happy to answer questions about our new ownership and what the future holds. A bookseller Roundtable will be held on Thursday August 7th at 2:30pm PDT/9:30pm GMT/7:30am AU where I and the Director of Sales & Account Management, Shaun Jamieson, will answer any questions you might have. In addition, the ‘Ask AbeBooks a question’ folder will continue to be available for ongoing questions from the seller community.

We realize this is important news for our community, and we are confident that this acquisition will greatly benefit AbeBooks’ sellers and provide us with many opportunities for future growth.

For more details please see the official release posted today.

Regards,

Dr. Hannes Blum
President and CEO
AbeBooks