ABEBOOKS BECOMES THE LARGEST BOOK SITE IN THE WORLD BY LISTING ITS 50 MILLIONTH BOOK

(Victoria, BC, November 19, 2003)- Selling books on the Internet reached a milestone today as the 50 millionth book was listed on AbeBooks.com, making it the website of book listings in the world.

"It's a huge achievement for our company, but also for the twelve thousand independent booksellers who list on AbeBooks. This milestone is theirs-they've made it the largest book site of any kind in the world," explained Hannes Blum, AbeBooks CEO and President.

AbeBooks started out by listing book inventories for four small antiquarian booksellers in Victoria, British Columbia in 1996. Word spread quickly among book collectors and small independent booksellers. Today AbeBooks list books for over twelve thousand independent booksellers in forty-five countries on four websites. It has become the world's largest online marketplace for used, rare, and out-of-print books, in part due to word-of-mouth marketing by those who love the site. Each day between 15,000 and 20,000 books are sold on AbeBooks four sites.

Jeri Bass of Wells Books in Victoria, who specializes in rare and collectible nautical and natural history books, was one of the original four sellers to list books on AbeBooks.com. "We thought it was exciting but no one ever imagined where it would go. I remember when we first uploaded, we had 300 books and I said "Whoa, imagine listing one thousand?" 50 million books would never have been imaginable back then. "

The 50 millionth book was listed at 12:01am this morning by Honey's Books of Natchitoches, Louisiana. It was a secondhand paperback copy of "The Lord of the Rings" by JRR Tolkien.

To celebrate listing 50 million books, AbeBooks spokesperson, Marci Crossan, highlighted interesting books currently on the site: "Our booksellers specialize in everything from signed first editions, to cookbooks, military history, Americana, comics, textbooks, kids books, bestselling fiction-and everything in between. We've got rare signed first edition Hemingway's selling for $150,000 (US), bibles printed in the 1400's, and of course, lots of recent bestsellers at one dollar, if you're looking for a deal."

About AbeBooks
AbeBooks is the world's largest online marketplace for secondhand, rare, and out-of-print books with 50 million books listed by over 12,000 independent booksellers. AbeBooks is a global company based in Victoria, British Columbia Canada, with sites dedicated to book buyers in North America (AbeBooks.com), the UK (AbeBooks.co.uk), France (AbeBooks.fr), and Germany (AbeBooks.de). These domestic sites serve specific countries while making their unique book inventories available to all.

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Contacts
Richard Davies, PR & Publicity Mgr., AbeBooks.com
Ph: 250-412-3238
rdavies@abebooks.com