Alibris's acquisition of Classicforum, a U.K. online listing service for used and rare books, is the latest development in the changing market for used and antiquarian books sold over the Internet. Alibris.com purchased Classicforum.com to extend its reach in Europe; the move gives European dealers who stay with the service an expanded customer base.

In the past several years, new online book-listing services have debuted; others have failed or been acquired. Meanwhile, a growing number of dealers and consumers have embraced the Internet, making the market more competitive.

The largest players have not changed. The two major listing services—companies that bring together buyers and sellers, charging dealers a monthly fee to list their inventories—remain Abebooks.com and Bibliofind.com. Abebooks, which debuted in 1996 as Advanced Book Exchange and is located in Victoria, B.C, is a network of 7,275 dealers listing more than 25 million books. Bibliofind, also founded in 1996 and featuring 20 million books, was acquired by Exchange.com in January 1999. That May, Amazon.com purchased Exchange.com.

New Listing Services

Several new matching services have appeared in the past two years. Bookavenue.com went live in June 1999 and lists three million books from 600 booksellers. Rhett Moran, Bookavenue's v-p operations and proprietor of Gutenberg Holdings, a Monticello, N.Y., bookseller, said one of Bookavenue's objectives is to keep dealer costs low. Its monthly fees range from $5 to $29.95, compared to Abebooks' $20 to $100. Moran estimated that 190,000 e-mail orders have come through Bookavenue's order server in 15 months (that figure excludes purchases via phone or mail).

Another new operation is TomFolio.com, run by A Book CoOp, a Wisconsin cooperative. Launched in June 2000, the organization has 99 members listing 400,000 titles. Participants pay a monthly fee and purchase one share of stock for $250 ($400 starting in June). "The advantage is we control our own destiny by vote," said Jerome Parmer, the co-op's president and co-owner of Parmer Books, San Diego, Calif.

Several associations of antiquarian booksellers have redesigned their sites and improved their search functions. These include the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (abaa.org) and its affiliate, the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ilab-lila.com). The English Antiquarian Booksellers Association reportedly has plans for a similar site.

A Book Abroad

In addition to Classicforum, which had offices in the U.K., Germany and France, Europe has given birth to a number of used-book listing services, including JustBooks, which introduced its German site (JustBooks.de) in September 1999, followed by a U.K. version (JustBooks.co.uk) and a French version (JustBooks.fr) in 2000. It currently lists three million titles from 740 booksellers.

JustBooks has 65,000 registered users and claimed 350,000 visitors as of January, with the latter increasing by 20% to 25% per month, according to Boris Wertz, JustBooks' cofounder and managing director. Consumers purchased a total of 10,000 books through the site from October through January. JustBooks works like Abebooks in the way it matches up sellers and buyers, but it charges sellers 5%—8% of the price of each book sold, rather than a monthly fee.

Another European site, AntiQbook, is also experimenting with a 10% sales commission for smaller dealers, but typically charges a monthly fee. Started in 1995 as the Netherlands Antiquarian Booksellers Network (NAN), a service for Dutch dealers, AntiQbook was quickly discovered by foreign booksellers. The site lists 2.1 million volumes from 230 dealers, 70 of which are from the U.S.

"The market in Europe is different from the U.S.," AntiQbook cofounder Piet Wesselman told PW. He explained that the Netherlands, with 16 million inhabitants, is home to 800 secondhand bookshops. "The urge to buy books on the Internet is not quite as large as in the U.S.," he said. "And we don't have the mail-order tradition you have." (Many North American dealers, especially of antiquarian books, rely largely on mail order, making the Internet a natural extension.)

Wesselman estimated there are 15 Internet book databases in Europe, mostly organized by nation or language, including three in Germany, five in the U.K., one in Italy, two in France and two in Spain. "Even the Internet doesn't cross borders," he said, noting that taxes and postage make cross-boundary sales costly. (A significant proportion of transactions on European sites involve American dealers and purchasers.)

Among the other listing sites that have launched over the last two years are Digital Bibliophile Community (digibib.com), introduced in October 1999; worldbookdealers.com, an invitation-only service for sellers of rare books; and 21 North Main, which premiered in May 2000 to sell 10 million used books from 2,500 dealers to college and university libraries.

At the same time, some listing services have closed their doors, including Global Book Market, UsedBooks.com, YourBooks.com and BookQuest. Australia-based Bibliocity, one of the top four sites in 1999, was merged into Alibris.

Booksellers estimate that 60% of dealers who list on one service try to maximize their reach through multiple venues. Still, there are diminishing returns. "It's hard to know how cost-effective things are, after Abe and Bibliofind," said Ken Lopez, owner of Ken Lopez, Bookseller, Hadley, Mass.

The E-Commerce Model

Another player in the hard-to-find book market is Alibris. The company started in 1994 as one of the first listing services, then called Interloc, and operated similarly to Abebooks. In 1998, it changed its name to Alibris and set up as an e-commerce company backed by venture capital and the Ingram Book Group. Customers who order from Alibris may be purchasing from Alibris's warehouse of owned books or from an independent bookseller; all shipments are labeled with the Alibris brand.

The company, which carries more than 13 million books from "a couple of thousand" dealers, also fulfills for other organizations on a private-label basis. When a customer requests an out-of-print book from Contentville or Chapters, it is sourced from Alibris, although the customer sees only the name of the company from which it ordered. "We've developed seamless, proprietary interfaces that allow customers to access our database in real time," Martin Manley, Alibris president and CEO, told PW.

Alibris is the only used-book network on the Internet that owns inventory. Its warehouse stores 1.1 million books owned by Alibris, as well as consignments, which it uses—along with dealer-supplied volumes—to fulfill orders. Manley believes this system improves customer service. "People will wait for the rarest of books, but for most out-of-print titles they expect the same speed and reliability as they do for in-print books," he said.

Many dealers told PW they stopped selling to Alibris after it changed from Interloc. They said they prefer a monthly fee to Alibris's 20% commission per sale, believe customers do not like Alibris's resulting higher prices and, in particular, like customers to know their order came from the dealer rather than from Alibris.

Moran started Bookavenue in part as a reaction to the change of Interloc to Alibris. "That relationship [between dealer and customer] is the most important part for the bookseller," said Moran.

Andrew Armacost, head of the antiquarian department at Oak Knoll Books, Newcastle, Del., took a different view. "A lot of antiquarian booksellers don't sell to Alibris on principle," he said. "We don't have any problems. We like to sell books."

Manley agreed that there are two types of dealers. One is the store that wants to build customer loyalty. "They're pure retailers, and that's fine," Manley said. "Billboards [his term for listing services] are very good for them." Alibris, on the other hand, targets the second group. "They're more focused on selling and not on developing customer relationships," Manley explained.

Wired Stores and Chains

Several used bookstores and chains have set up their own e-commerce sites (although they often list on one or more of the services, too). Powell's, Portland, Ore., was one of the first, taking its initial order via e-mail in 1994, setting up an online store for technology books shortly thereafter and implementing a full e-commerce Web site in late 1997. More than 90% of the eight-store chain's 1.5-million-title inventory is online, according to David Weich, Powells.com's director of content and marketing. The store's Internet sales have quadrupled since 1999, with the Web site currently generating over 20% of Powell's revenues.

Half Price Books has listed a limited inventory from a few of its stores on Abebooks. "It was fairly successful for the scope of it," said Charles Dee Mitchell, the chain's project director for e-commerce. Half Price had an informational Web site but is relaunching halfpricebooks.com next month as a full e-commerce site.

Half Price is focusing on remainders as well as some audio and music. "It's purely a matter of inventory," said Mitchell, who reported the site will start with 10,000 volumes and expand to 30,000. "Our Web site will be as much like [the stores] as possible," he added. "We'll encourage customers to browse a category." Halfpricebooks.com will offer used books in a separate section. Each of the chain's 65 stores can list items; customers will contact them directly rather than using the shopping cart.

New York's Strand bookstore launched its e-commerce site, strandbooks.com, on February 9. It has listed select titles on Abebooks and Bibliofind since March 2000 and, less than a year later, the Internet accounts for 5% of store sales. Co-owner Nancy Bass said she hopes e-commerce ultimately will account for 25% of revenues.

"Our objective [for the new site] was to sell more books and to promote the store," said Bass. Like Half Price, the site has a search function but is set up for browsing. More than 90% of the Strand's 2.5 million volumes are on strandbooks.com.

While most smaller dealers opt to list on Abebooks, Bibliofind, Alibris and/or their competitors, some are setting up their own Web sites and a few are conducting e-commerce. Lopez, a dealer in high-end antiquarian books, started his own e-commerce site (lopezbooks.com), in addition to selling through several of the listing services. "We spent a long time building an identity through our catalogues," he said, "so we wanted to extend that through the Web site."

Marketplaces, Auctions and Shopbots

In addition to the proliferation of listing services, e-commerce sites and store sites, there are alternative venues for used books.

Half.com, founded in 1999 and acquired by eBay in July 2000, is a marketplace for books, CDs and videos at set prices. On February 12, Half.com announced that Powell's Books would add its inventory to the site. Similarly, Amazon.com's zShops list new, used and hard-to-find products of all types, sold by specialty retailers, small businesses and individuals. The site claims a 20-million-member customer base; purchasers click on a "Buy It!" button and are put in touch with the seller.

Auctions are another alternative. In addition to eBay, newer, higher-end sites include eBay Premier (formerly eBay Great Collections) and Sothebys.com. Many booksellers avoid eBay in favor of the listing sites, but others like auctions. "Better than 90% of our revenue comes from eBay," said David Dale, owner of Bookdales, Richfield, Minn., who also sells on Abebooks and, one day a week, through his shop.

Many of the listing sites can be perused at once by going through a book-dedicated shopbot. The best-known is Bookfinder.com, which started as a commercial site in 1998 and aggregates 30,000 new and used booksellers and 30 million books, according to cofounder and CEO Anirvan Chatterjee.

Bookfinder, which Chatterjee said is profitable, makes its money from sources such as advertising and affiliate commissions. "We're trying to provide a single brand name," explained Chatterjee, noting that customers who come to Bookfinder discover individual booksellers and can become repeat customers.

"Bookfinder brings us 10,000 customers a month," said Wertz. "That's a lot of traffic that comes through Bookfinder." Wesselman reported that 100,000 queries a day, or about 60%—70% of the daily total, arrive through Bookfinder, but added, "To my regret, most of these are book dealers looking for prices."

Other book-related shopbots include Bookradar.com, AddALL and BestBookBuys, which search new and used books from various sources, and Respond.com, a shopbot for all kinds of products, including books.

Outlook for Traditional Stores

Although no one has measured the size of the market for used and rare books, either online or off, Alibris studied 10 published research sources, enhanced by information from its dealer network, and estimated annual sales of "hard-to-find" books—out-of-print, antiquarian and other scarce titles—at $20 billion worldwide through all channels.

While online sales seem to be inching up, so are the number of dealers competing for those sales. Derek MacNeil, a member of Abebooks' business development team, reported the number of booksellers on that site has doubled in two years.

"In the olden days, five or six years ago, anything online just zoomed off," said Moran, noting that this is not the case today. "There certainly is an Internet book," he added, citing journal back issues and out-of-print university press titles. "The older out-of-print children's books just fly out." On the other hand, fiction and nonfiction titles published after 1990 work better in his bricks-and-mortar store.

Prices for truly rare books have gone up fast, while values of most books have declined. On the other hand, many antiquarian dealers expected the extreme high end of the market to do best over the Internet, but that has not proved true. "The big spenders [$500 and up] are typically older men and they don't always have the computer skills," said Armacost.

According to Book Hunter Press, which publishes the Used Book Lover's Guides and tracks the used and rare book market, 65% of used booksellers are online, although not all purchase or sell online. The majority of book dealers that sell on the Internet list 5%—20% of their stock; Internet sales range from 10% to 50% of gross sales.

Some observers predicted the Internet would result in the closure of used bookshops, as owners either suffered from the increased competition or devoted their time to the Internet. While most book dealers cited anecdotal evidence of stores closing, Book Hunter Press data reveals that the number of used book dealers and book shops has increased since the advent of the Internet as a sales channel in 1995. In 1999 (the latest figures available), the number of U.S. booksellers was 7,095, representing a 21% increase over 1996. The number of used bookstores grew 14%, to 4,308, over that period.

Susan Siegel, copublisher of Book Hunter Press and coauthor/copublisher of the Used Book Lover's Guides, said revenues from the Internet have allowed some dealers to open stores and some to close, depending on their objectives. "You can pick your level of involvement," she explained.

Moran recently opened a shop to complement Gutenberg Holdings' Internet revenues, which formerly represented 100% of income. "We saw the figures [from the Internet] level off, so we went out and opened a bricks-and-mortar store," he said. Sales from the store will soon surpass those from the Internet.

Conversely, the Internet allowed Dale to cut back on his shop hours as he approached retirement. He downsized to a 1,400-square-foot store open only on Saturdays. "I focus on putting stuff on the Internet during the week," he said. "I kind of work at my own pace. I'm working to cut down on the 20,000 volumes I have in boxes and storerooms."

Some booksellers, such as Book Barn in Niantic, Conn., eschew the Internet. "Our growth rate is good," Book Barn owner Randi White explained. "What we're doing is working." He pointed out that he would have to raise prices for Internet books, because of higher costs, essentially setting up a two-tiered pricing program and risking complaints from customers who already believe dealers put their best items on the Web. He added that the time and cost required to input his 140,000 books, plus the 200—800 new volumes he acquires each day, would not be worthwhile and that most of his books are not scarce enough to warrant an Internet listing.

The majority of used and rare booksellers employ a combination of store, Internet and/or mail-order sales. Lopez, for example, continues to do the bulk of his business through catalogues, although the Internet now accounts for 15% of sales, up from 12% last year and 10% the year before.

Jane Landwehr, co-owner of Fireside Book Company in Columbus, Ohio, opened her shop in March 1993 and went online in 1995. "We're not as gung-ho as a lot of people about the Web," Landwehr said. "I think it would be hard to make a living just selling over the Internet. It adds to our sales, but we don't sell enough to live on it." The Web generates about 50% of revenues.

A Changing Online Environment

Similarly, Alibris has created business-to-business partnerships with academic library suppliers Blackwell's and YBP Library Services; retailers Chapters and Books-A-Million; Canadian book wholesaler Pegasus; and Ingram.

Abebooks has been teamed with BarnesandNoble.com for a little over two years. "Sales were really encouraging," said MacNeil. That effort's success led to additional partnerships with French wholesaler Chapitre, listing site 21 North Main, Japan's Akaikutsu and eBay Premier. Dealers can opt out of any of these programs; MacNeil estimated 75% of those eligible participate.

Abebooks implemented credit card ordering in November 1999 and is about to launch AbeBookCase, an in-store search program for members and nonmembers. "[Two years ago,] we were just a listing service bringing buyers and sellers together," said MacNeil. "Now we offer a lot of value-added services to booksellers."