Alibris Inc.
Type	Private
Founded	1998 Emeryville, California
Headquarters	Emeryville, California
Key people	Marty Manley, CEO Brian Elliott, COO Michael Schaffer, CTO
Industry	Retail (Specialty)
Products	Mainly used books, out-of-print books, rare books. Also features used or collectible music and movies (albums, cassette tapes, compact discs, DVDs)
Revenue	$49M (as of 3/31/04)
Employees	55 (as of 3/31/04)
Website	www.alibris.com

Alibris is an on-line store that sells used books, out-of-print books, rare books, and other media articles through an on-line network of thousands of independent bookstores. Booksellers in many countries list their inventories on Alibris which in turn offers the books on its website, as well as other channels such as Barnes and Noble and Borders Books. In return, it receives a monthly fee and a percentage commission on sales. The business premise is that Alibris can save a small bookseller time and money by listing once with Alibris and then have Alibris list to other, well-known book retailers. These new-book retailers get access to older books that might be out of print or hard to find without having to integrate with each small seller individually. The consumer, in turn, only has to go to a few sources to get access to many booksellers. The company claims to offer more than 60 million books from a network of over 10,000 book sellers. Image File history File links Alibris. ... A private company is a company that is independently owned. ... 1998 (MCMXCVIII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... The city of Emeryville highlighted within Alameda County Emeryville is a city located in Alameda County, California. ... The city of Emeryville highlighted within Alameda County Emeryville is a city located in Alameda County, California. ... Drawing of a self-service store. ... A used book is a book which has been read before. ... Out-of-print books may be found at libraries or specialty book stores. ... 33â…“ LP vinyl record for The Beatles Magical Mystery Tour album from the 1960s. ... For the meaning of cassette in genetics, see cassette (genetics). ... A CD (Compact Disc), is an optical disc used to store digital data, originally developed for storing digital audio. ... DVD (Digital Versatile Disc, often incorrectly explained as Digital Video Disc) is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. ... Revenue is a U.S. business term for the amount of money that a company earns from its activities in a given period, mostly from sales of products and/or services to customers. ... Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. ... This page as shown in the AOL 9. ... A used book is a book which has been read before. ... Out-of-print books may be found at libraries or specialty book stores. ... Independent bookstores are primarily owned and operated by local business people with ties to the community, as opposed to chain bookstores or online booksellers, most of which are owned by large corporations. ... This page as shown in the AOL 9. ... A typical Barnes & Noble bookstore. ... Borders Books and Music (NYSE: BGP) is a North American chain of bookstores, with some branches overseas. ...

Unlike other companies which aggregate numerous used book sellers, Alibris also maintains its own stock of used books, which are offered to buyers alongside the rest. Alibris has a policy of keeping for itself books returned by customers that had been priced under $100, instead of having them shipped back to the original seller. Alibris, in its early years, bought out the entire stock of many storefront used booksellers. These are probably the 2 largest sources for the Alibris-owned stock, which is warehoused in Sparks, Nevada.

Certain sales made through Alibris are sent by the bookseller to the Sparks location, where they are inspected and repackaged for shipping overseas, or are combined with items from other sellers and shipped to library buyers, for their convenience.

While one of the older and larger companies who combine the listings of many sellers, Alibris has larger and smaller competitors such as Abebooks, Amazon.com and Biblio.com. In addition, sites that search many bookseller sites (i.e., metasearch sites), such as AddALL and BookFinder.com also compete as services which allow buyers to find a new or used book and compare offerings among many booksellers. AbeBooks (formerly the Advanced Book Exchange) is an online marketplace for books. ... Amazon. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... AddALL is a website that offers an online book search feature. ... BookFinder. ...

Alibris also has a similar network for music (albums, cassette tapes, and CDs) and movies (VHS or DVD) although they appear to mostly focus on the used book market. For the meaning of cassette in genetics, see cassette (genetics). ... CDS may refer to: Commercial Data Systems, Ltd. ... Top view of VHS cassette with U.S. 25c coin for scale Bottom view of VHS cassette with magnetic tape exposed Top view of VHS cassette with front casing removed The Video Home System, better known by its abbreviation VHS, is a recording and playing standard for analog video cassette... DVD (Digital Versatile Disc, often incorrectly explained as Digital Video Disc) is an optical disc storage media format that can be used for data storage, including movies with high video and sound quality. ...

External link

• Alibris' homepage

References

• SEC filings

External Links

Some similar websites that specialize in selling used books:

• Abebooks - online marketplace of thousands of independent booksellers of used, rare and out of print books
• Biblio - Biblio.com is a book search marketplace for used, rare, out-of-print, and hard-to-find books listed for sale by thousands of independent dealers worldwide.