ALL THE BOOKSELLERS IN THE WORLD... THE HOTTEST STORY IN THE
WORLD OF BOOKS
5th June 2000
(Victoria, BC) - Keith Waters and Rick Pura know what it's like
to build a world-class company from the ground up. After a modest
start-up in 1996, the pair have created the world's biggest used,
rare and out-of print online bookstore. Based in Victoria, B.C.
abebooks.com combines the inventories of the world's used booksellers
with a powerful search engine, giving readers unprecedented choice
and convenience.
AbeBooks.com also leads the way for small booksellers
to reduce or eliminate the costs of maintaining a store and printing
catalogues. It all started four years ago, when the two entrepreneurs
launched abebooks.com with a pool of just five Victoria bookstores.
Today, the site is the hottest story in the world of books, with
the inventories of more than 6,200 booksellers from around the
globe - and counting. Book buyers can rely on abebooks.com's advanced
search capabilities and e-commerce engine to easily buy books
from a virtual bookshelf of over 18 million books.
Customers can also leave search requests on the
site - abebooks.com will continue to search its inventories for
them. "We're really excited by the incredible success,"
says Waters. "It's given many of our member booksellers a
whole new lease on life by opening up a worldwide market they
were never big enough to pursue on their own."
AbeBooks.com has forged partnerships with eBay,
Barnes & Noble, and 21 North Main, a U.S.-based company that
supplies college and university libraries with used books. AbeBooks.com
is constantly on the lookout for new opportunities. "The
network model of business on the Net has long been touted, and
we feel we have the single best example of it in the world today,"
says Pura.
Whether it's a fine first edition of a childhood
classic or a paperback bestseller, abebooks.com helps people with
a passion for books and an eye for a bargain find exactly what
they're looking for. "He discovered an out-of-print book
site on the Internet -- Advanced Book Exchange, abebooks.com for
short -- and felt like a mosquito in a nudist colony. Everywhere
he turned was something tasty." -Jeff Klinkenberg, For the
Love of Marjorie, St. Petersburg Times, May 28 2000."
-30-
About AbeBooks.com
AbeBooks is the world's largest book site, listing over 35 million
books. With offices in Canada and Germany, abebooks provides independent
booksellers with business support, technological infrastructure
and international marketing, enabling booksellers of any size
to compete on an equal footing with book superstores. Through
its acquisition of Germany's JustBooks, now abebooks Europe, the
company now serves over 10,000 member booksellers worldwide via
web sites in English, German, and French. AbeBooks was launched
on the Internet in May of 1996 and offers consumers the most complete
collection of rare, used, and out-of-print books available anywhere.
Contacts
Richard Davies, PR & Publicity Mgr., AbeBooks.com
Ph: 250-412-3238
rdavies@abebooks.com
|
 |
|
