Industry Retail (Specialty) Founded 2000 | Website www.biblio.com | |
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Type of business Private, Dot-com company Founder(s) Brendan Sherar
num_employees = 10 (2010) Products used books, rare books, out of print books, new books and textbooks Headquarters Asheville, North Carolina, United States Profiles | ||
Biblio.com is an online marketplace specializing in rare and collectible books from independent bookstores around the world. Biblio.com was established in 2000 in Asheville, NC, by Brendan J. Sherar and Michael C. Tracey. Biblio.com announced a joint three-way agreement with Bibliopolis, LLC and Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA) in April 2009, to provide a new e-commerce site for ABAA members and their books.
Contents
A used book marketplace
Begun in 2000 as a metasearch or price comparison engine, Biblio changed to be a marketplace in February 2003. Biblio seeks to differentiate itself from its competitors by preventing penny books and limiting print-on-demand books. Biblio recognizes that the bookseller is its customer and encourages communication between the bookseller and the retail bookbuyers.
In May 2009 Biblio launched www.Biblio.co.uk, an e-commerce site dedicated to second hand and antiquarian books in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe.
Inventory management program
Biblio.com now provides BiblioDirector, an inventory management software that offers one-click uploading to Biblio, but also provides options for uploading to other book marketplace websites as well.
Biblio.com provided Bookhound inventory management program for free to its sellers from June 2008 to December 2012. An updated version of Bookhound is still available for sale through Bibliopolis.
Speedy searches
Starting in 2008 Biblio.com launched a complete overhaul of both their site and booksearch technology, based on the Solr search engine (Solr is a subproject of the Apache HTTP Server Lucene project). The Solr search engine provides fast access to 60 million titles by author, title, illustrator, data, and several other fields. Biblio's stated goal for search is to help customers find their titles in as few clicks as possible.
Partnerships with ABAA and others
On April 17, 2009 Biblio.com announced a joint three-way agreement with Bibliopolis, LLC and Antiquarian Booksellers' Association of America (ABAA) to provide a new e-commerce site for ABAA members and their books. Under the 4-year joint operating agreement, the new ABAA e-commerce site for its book dealers features Biblio.com’s search engine and e-commerce technology. Berkeley-based Bibliopolis was responsible for crafting the design and user interfaces for the site. In addition to the ABAA site, Biblio powers similar niche-market sites such as Biblion.co.uk and IOBABooks.com (Independent Online Booksellers Association).
The bottom line
Biblio.com is wholly owned and operated by Biblio, Inc., a privately held company with a commitment to a Triple bottom line, in part through its environmental program, Ecosend, and its work with Biblio Charitable Works, Inc. In October 2007, Biblio announced that it had become the first online book marketplace to offer carbon free shipping through its Ecosend program, purchasing carbon offsets for the shipment of every book sold through its site.