Amazon Buys ABE: Antiquarian Books Sellers Beware

We just had official word today that Amazon has bought ABE or American Book Exchange. ABE's CEO sent us an email today telling us that Amazon has acquired ABE. President and CEO Hannes Blum assures ABE sellers that Amazon is dedicated to maintaining ABE as a "stand-alone business" and that all things will remain the same for ABE sellers and buyers.

Don't believe it for a minute. The last time Amazon bought out one of the major venues for selling out of print, rare, antiquarian, and used books, they gave the same speech. They said they would maintain Bibliofind.com as a separate stand-alone business and that nothing would change. We believed it then. Maybe it was because it was the 90s and we were giddy with the potential of the internet.

The first thing Amazon did was incorporate Bibliofind.com into the Amazon website. It then came up with Amazon Z shops and put all the Bibliofind listings in there. We sold a lot of books through Z shops the first year it was open. But then Amazon decided to open "Marketplace". Anyone with an Amazon account could now list any book with an ISBN there simply by putting in the ISBN for the book in a drop down box from a link on the Amazon home page. This way everybody who read a John Grisham novel and wanted to sell it could then sell it on Amazon as a used book. Soon there were so many individuals selling a few of their previously read books on Amazon that Amazon buried Z shops where all the fine and rare books were listed.

Remember Z shops? That is where the professional used books sellers who had listed their books on Bibliofind had listed their fine and rare books. Z shops disappeared. First Amazon took Z Shops off of its home page. It became more difficult to find rare and antique books. Then Z shops disappeared altogether. Most of the books in Z shops (originally Bibliofind) were rare books, first editions, antique books that were published before an international book numbering system was incorporated in the last quarter of the 20th century and so had no ISBN.

Z shops disappeared and so did the rare and antiquarian books including rare editions of books because Amazon's marketplace didn't (and still doesn't) differentiate between a first edition of "To Kill a Mockingbird" and a ratty torn up underlined paperback edition that is three years old. If you are really determined, you can put in some work to find one of these rare or first edition books but then there is no description. Book collectors want to know details. Amazon is not about the details. It's about the numbers.

Amazon's decision to have a Marketplace where anyone can sell any books has been great for the millions of people who decided to resell their Nicholas Sparks books. And it has worked out great for the thousands who wanted to buy them for a dollar or two on Amazon and didn't care what condition the book was in or what edition it was.

Amazon decided they were making more money or could make more money from the people who were reselling their Jan Karon books than actual professional booksellers so they started encouraging anyone who sold a book on Amazon to price it lower than anyone else. As a result, you can now buy books for a penny on Amazon (minus shipping of course).

Strangely enough, Amazon's marketplace venue spawned a whole new breed of book sellers. These are the people who come to used book sales armed with ISBN scanners who scan a number from a book directly in to Amazon's website to see whether or not it worth buying to resell on Amazon. These aggressive and irritating scavengers don't know anything about books. They don't love books and they don't care about books. They are Amazon people and like Amazon, all they care about are the numbers.

Amazon is all about the numbers; it cares about the masses of people who buy and sell a few books a year, books that have been assigned numbers (ISBNs). If you are a professional used, out of print and antiquarian books seller, the chances of someone buying your rare first edition "Carrie" on Amazon is very slim. Any collector wanting the rare first edition will want full details about the book and Amazon doesn't allow that. The book has an ISBN but it's the same number assigned to all editions of the book published since the original first limited run. As the bottom-feeders with scanners can tell you, Amazon promotes the lowest prices on its website.

For those of us who consider ourselves professional antiquarian books sellers, it is time to mourn ABE. If we are to learn from history then we should know that ABE is going to go the way that Bibliofind did. Amazon would be quick to point out that if you go to Bibliofind's website, you will see that it is indeed maintained by Amazon. But just try finding a rare book there. Put in a search for "To Kill a Mockingbird" published before 1970. There aren't any. And as any bookseller worth his salt knows, there are thousands of book club editions of the title to be found any day of the week. So technically, Amazon can still say they maintain the Bibliofind website but it's a farce.

Now we must look to Alibris, and Biblio.com (not to be confused with Amazon's closet skeleton, Bibliofind. ABE is surely going to drown in Amazon's ocean of marketplace items as Amazon slowly creeps closer to becoming the global flea market. And like flea markets, the old and rare and unusual stuff is fast being replaced by rows of socks, cheap knock-offs, poorly constructed imported furniture and horrible smelling incense. I salute you ABE and may you rest in peace.