Alibris is an online store that sells new books, used books, out-of-print books, rare books, and other media through an online network of independent booksellers.

History

Martin Manley founded Alibris in 1997 with the team behind early online book marketplace Interloc, which Alibris purchased. Interloc was founded by book seller Richard Weatherford, programmer Tom Sawyer and computer tech Brad Councilman in 1994. Interloc was one of the earliest successful efforts to centralize used book data online. It remained a private network until 1996, when the company launched its website built in Thunderstone Texis by Senior Engineer Michael Warchut. The Alibris website was launched on October 23, 1998 at 14:30PM EST also built by Michael Warchut. Alibris was incorporated in 1998. Alibris acquired Bibliocity in October 1999. The company was backed by venture capital until 2006, when it was purchased by

Oak Hill Capital Partners Oak Hill Capital Partners is a private equity firm headquartered in New York City, with more than $19 billion of committed capital from entrepreneurs, endowments, foundations, corporations, pension funds and global financial institutions. Ro ...

, a

private equity firm A private equity firm or private equity company (often described as a financial sponsor) is an investment management company that provides financial backing and makes investments in the private equity of a Startup company, startup or of an existin ...

. In February 2010, Oak Hill Capital Partners bought Monsoon and merged it with Alibris with Monsoon Commerce owning Alibris. As of February 2017, Alibris was owned by AM Holding Inc. (formerly Monsoon Commerce Inc.) In 2017 Alibris Holding sold off Monsoon Commerce of Portland and Stonegde Technologies of Collegeville, PA, and Alibris was subsequently sold in June 2017 to a private investor. The company remains privately owned.

Company

Booksellers list their inventories on Alibris which in turn offers the books on its retail website, a separate library services site, and business-to-business partners such as

Barnes & Noble Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across the United States. Barnes & Noble operates mainly through its B ...

, Half Price Books,

Walmart Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

, and

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

. It also offers services in the UK through the Alibris.co.uk website. It offers more than 250 million books from a network of over 6000 booksellers in 65 countries. Most sales made through Alibris are fulfilled by the bookseller directly to the end customer. Sales to libraries or other institutions or books needing transoceanic shipping are consolidated in a distribution center in

Sparks, Nevada Sparks is a city in Washoe County, Nevada, United States. It was founded in 1904, incorporated on March 15, 1905, and is located just east of Reno, Nevada, Reno. The 2020 U.S. Census counted 108,445 residents in the city. It is the List of citi ...

. Alibris also has a similar network for music (

albums An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

cassette tapes Cassette, also known as cassette tape, refers to a small plastic unit containing a length of magnetic tape on two reels. The design was created to replicate the way a reel-to-reel machine works with tape moving from one reel to another while bein ...

, and

CDs CDS, CDs, Cds, etc. may refer to: Finance * Canadian Depository for Securities, Canadian post-trade financial services company * Certificate of deposit (CDs) * Counterfeit Deterrence System, developed by the Central Bank Counterfeit Deterrence ...

) and movies (

VHS VHS (Video Home System) is a discontinued standard for consumer-level analog video recording on tape cassettes, introduced in 1976 by JVC. It was the dominant home video format throughout the tape media period of the 1980s and 1990s. Ma ...

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

). Alibris allows customers to buy and sell at the same time. Alibris charges a starting fee that varies based on what is being sold and what kind of commission is charged. Alibris was a charter member of the Google eBooks service when it was announced by Google on December 6, 2010.

References

External links

* * * {{cite journal , url= http://www.bookthink.com/0074/74ali1.htm , title= Putting A Face on Faceless Venues: An Interview with Alibris' A.J. Kohn , first= Catherine , last= Petruccione , journal= Book Thinker , format= Newsletter , issue= 74 , date= Aug 7, 2006 , url-status= live , archive-date= June 7, 2007 , archive-url= https://web.archive.org/web/20070607144202/http://www.bookthink.com/0074/74ali1.htm Bookstores in the San Francisco Bay Area Book selling websites Music retailers of the United States Online retailers of the United States Online film databases Product searching websites Companies based in Emeryville, California American companies established in 1997 Bookstores established in the 20th century Retail companies established in 1997 1997 establishments in California Comparison shopping websites EBay stores

History

Company

See also

References

External links