Amazon.com buys another Book Seller

An agreement Friday for online retail giant Amazon.com to purchase AbeBooks will not result in any staff changes at the Victoria-based online bookseller.

If anything, staff levels might rise.

"The staff and the team here will remain in place," said Hannes Blum, CEO of AbeBooks, in an interview. Blum will retain his management position at AbeBooks, which will keep its name and continue to operate in a business-as-usual mode. "That was one of the important things in the negotiations. The team will continue to run the company independently."

Russell Grandinetti, vice-president of books for Amazon.com, said in the same interview that while there are no immediate plans to change the composition and size of the AbeBooks staff, "our goal is to help Abe continue to grow over time."

AbeBooks has 135 employees worldwide, with 100 of those at its Victoria headquarters. It has a second office in Dusseldorf, Germany.

No details of the Friday deal were announced. Grandinetti said he expects it to close before the end of the year.

This is the second ownership change for the Victoria company since it began operations in 1996. Five years ago, German company Hubert Burda Media bought a majority share of AbeBooks.

AbeBooks has more than 110 million used, rare and out-of-print books, and is expected to fill a niche market for Amazon. In a press release, Grandinetti said that "AbeBooks brings added breadth and expanded selection to our customers worldwide."

In addition to operating independently under its own name, AbeBooks will maintain all its websites, including one containing reviews of Canadian books and interviews with Canadian authors.

The Victoria company represents 13,500 booksellers, selling 110 million books.

"AbeBooks has built a great business, and we've watched them from Seattle for a while, and we think we can build a great selling- and buying-customer experience together," said Grandinetti, adding that negotiations were relatively short.

"We think there are a lot of things that [AbeBooks] has been able to work on and develop over time that we can learn from, and we hope there are things that we've developed at Amazon that we can share, whether it's technology or know-how or experience in certain markets."

In a letter to booksellers, Blum said he expects the deal will "allow AbeBooks to expand its offerings and introduce new features and services to enhance the book buying and selling experience."

In the same letter, Blum said he and Shaun Jamieson, director of sales and account management, would answer all bookseller questions at a roundtable next Thursday.