Just when you thought there couldn't be another story about online retailing and book digitization:
Abebooks.com, the company with headquarters in Victoria, B.C., Canada, that matches buyers and sellers of new, used, collectible and antiquarian books and has sites serving North America, Germany, France, Spain and the U.K., has bought BookFinder.com.
BookFinder, Berkeley, Calif., a major book price comparison company, was founded by Anirvan Chatterjee and Charlie Hsu, longtime friends and University of California graduates. (The company began as a class project for Chatterjee at Berkeley.) The service allows searches of more than 100 million titles and receives a commission on purchases that result from a buyer being forwarded to a bookseller's Web site. BookFinder works with thousands of booksellers, including A1Books, Abebooks, Alibris, Amazon, B&N.com, Biblio.com, Buy.com, Chapters.indigo.ca, Overstock.com and Powells.com.
The purchase "strengthens our position in North America," Boris Wertz, COO of Abebooks.com, told Shelf Awareness. Still, the two companies will operate separately, and a certain friendly competitiveness will continue. "They compete with us for buyers to a certain extent, and they will continue to work with our competitors," Wertz explained. He stressed that the two companies have collaborated since 1996, when coincidentally they were both founded.
Abebooks sees major opportunities for BookFinder to grow, both in expanding its coverage in North America and going international, much in the way Abebooks expanded from its base in collectible books to used and then to new and textbooks. (BookFinder has a tiny staff.) By expanding its coverage of new books and textbooks, BookFinder can easily enter "new subsegments of the market," Wertz noted.
Wertz emphasized that Europe, which is two or three years behind North America in Internet development and the online book market, has very few online book comparison shopping services, and Abebooks.com has a platform for BookFinder to expand there. "We have the setup and technology in Europe," Wertz said.
In Germany and France, price comparison services for new books make little sense because of net book price agreements. But other than a "smaller service in Germany," there is almost no competition for price comparisons for used and collectible books. And in other countries that have no restrictions on new book prices, the field is wide open. "We think we can grow BookFinder quite significantly there," Wertz added.
Abebooks.com, the company with headquarters in Victoria, B.C., Canada, that matches buyers and sellers of new, used, collectible and antiquarian books and has sites serving North America, Germany, France, Spain and the U.K., has bought BookFinder.com.
BookFinder, Berkeley, Calif., a major book price comparison company, was founded by Anirvan Chatterjee and Charlie Hsu, longtime friends and University of California graduates. (The company began as a class project for Chatterjee at Berkeley.) The service allows searches of more than 100 million titles and receives a commission on purchases that result from a buyer being forwarded to a bookseller's Web site. BookFinder works with thousands of booksellers, including A1Books, Abebooks, Alibris, Amazon, B&N.com, Biblio.com, Buy.com, Chapters.indigo.ca, Overstock.com and Powells.com.
The purchase "strengthens our position in North America," Boris Wertz, COO of Abebooks.com, told Shelf Awareness. Still, the two companies will operate separately, and a certain friendly competitiveness will continue. "They compete with us for buyers to a certain extent, and they will continue to work with our competitors," Wertz explained. He stressed that the two companies have collaborated since 1996, when coincidentally they were both founded.
Abebooks sees major opportunities for BookFinder to grow, both in expanding its coverage in North America and going international, much in the way Abebooks expanded from its base in collectible books to used and then to new and textbooks. (BookFinder has a tiny staff.) By expanding its coverage of new books and textbooks, BookFinder can easily enter "new subsegments of the market," Wertz noted.
Wertz emphasized that Europe, which is two or three years behind North America in Internet development and the online book market, has very few online book comparison shopping services, and Abebooks.com has a platform for BookFinder to expand there. "We have the setup and technology in Europe," Wertz said.
In Germany and France, price comparison services for new books make little sense because of net book price agreements. But other than a "smaller service in Germany," there is almost no competition for price comparisons for used and collectible books. And in other countries that have no restrictions on new book prices, the field is wide open. "We think we can grow BookFinder quite significantly there," Wertz added.