For all those budding entrepreneurs here is an interview with what is now one of the largest and most successful online businesses around today. And all because a bookseller thought there ‘had to be a better way’!
Abe Books was born in 1996 and is living proof that this world needs ideas and those with the courage to act upon them. Here is an in-depth interview with Richard Davies, Press and Publicity Manager of Abe Books.
1. How did Abe Books start? Did the idea come out of the blue? What was the catalyst – if any?
It’s a long story so this page gives a detailed explanation of how AbeBooks began. You can pick details off this page.
Click here for more details of the company growth:
http://www.abebooks.com/books/CompanyInformation/Profile/history.shtml
As does this interview with one of the four founders – Cathy Waters who ran a used bookstore in Victoria, BC.
Click here for the full interview:
http://www.abebooks.com/docs/CompanyInformation/Timeline/cathy-waters.shtml
2. How did you attract the original public users?
Word of mouth within the second hand bookselling community quickly brought booksellers onto the site in the early days. In terms of buyers, AbeBooks was featured prominently in many media articles in the early days of ecommerce. AbeBooks also used many traditional means of marketing in the early years but the media attention helped generate a lot of interest in the site. It still does today.
3. Was a target set that had it not been achieved would have curtailed the project?
The original founders threw a party when the inventory reached three million books. They never expected the inventory to grow any bigger. There are more than 140 million books for sale today. I don’t think they ever set any targets.
4. If yes to the above, what rationale was applied – if any – to determine a sensible benchmark?
In theory, there is no limitation to the number of books that we can offer for sale. The internet is limitless as long as you invest in the technology behind the site, which we do.
5. How long did it take to build interest?
The site began to attract customers and booksellers very quickly after being launched in 1996. Books were the first product to become a staple of ecommerce. The business grew on a daily basis – the founders have told me that they were stunned by how fast it happened in the early days and months once the site was live.
6. Clearly the site has evolved over time, what was the original site like to start with?
Very basic. The site did not offer ecommerce – that was added later. Sellers paid a subscription fee to list their books for sale and that’s where the revenue came from.
7. Why different sites in different countries? Was it due to currency considerations? (We recognise that when we go to the bookseller lists, we see you cover the world and thus assume that the sites are linked.)
AbeBooks is a global business so the same books are offered for sale through all of our six global sites. A buyer in Munich can buy a book from a seller in Manchester. It was a natural move to become a global business because AbeBooks does hold its own inventory – we are not restricted by having to stock and staff warehouses full of books. In fact, AbeBooks was approached by booksellers across the world in those early days, so it was almost essential to become a global business.
8. Have you seen any copycat sites spring up based on your success?
There are now many online marketplaces. We were not the only one to work from the low-touch business model of a pure marketplace. eBay is the most famous, of course, but Etsy is very innovative these days.
9. You appear to have market domination? Is this correct and if so how did you achieve this, or was it an absence of bad luck do you think?
We are very proud of the wide range of books for sale on the site. Our success has come from a wonderful business model, being one of the first into the market and hard work over 15 years. It would be tough to enter this market today.
10. There was, from an outsider’s perspective, a paradigm shift when you decided to charge an additional commission fee on each book sold on top of the monthly subscription fee. This was brave decision. Were there any negative consequences?
AbeBooks has continued to grow even though we have made changes to how we earn revenue over the years. We are in business to be successful and make money.
11. Was there an initial resistance by the book trade to pay the monthly subscription and if so how did you overcome it?
We have a unique relationship with our booksellers. We depend on them for the inventory. We would have no customers without their books. We have always had a very open culture here and tried to explain why we do certain things. We value their opinions, talk to them a regular basis and explain things from our side of the business.
12. Rumour has it that in its formative years not only was AbeBooks one of the few profitable DotCom ventures but reached profitability within a matter of months rather than years. Would you like to comment?
AbeBooks has always been profitable.
13. As we understand it the founders initially didn’t have global aspirations. Nevertheless they were entrepreneurs in the true sense of the word. Do you believe that entrepreneurial spirit that founded your organisation was typical or atypical at the time?
The founders were true entrepreneurs. We are still in touch with them today. The business model they created was brilliant and perfect for the used book market. There were a lot of other internet entrepreneurs around at the time, including Jeff Bezos at Amazon. A lot of people thought the internet would become a new retailing channel and it has, but look at all the dot.com firms that failed. Selling on the internet is a very complex business and everything you do must be robust from day one.
14. Corporately, do you believe in the power of serendipity and if so would you like to comment?
That’s a good question. Who would have thought that used books would have been one of the first products to really become a successful area of ecommerce?
15. Looking at this through the eyes of our entrepreneur readers do you believe in today’s DotCom arena there is a distinction between good luck and the absence of bad luck – or are they two discrete entities?
There’s a distinction between good and bad businesses. Luck isn’t a factor. The beauty of the Internet is that things can be changed very quickly. If something isn’t working, you can change it fast. Also, online bookselling is governed by analytics – everything can be measured and benchmarked.
16. Although the underlying database engine is undoubtedly powerful arguably the user interface although simple is comparatively unsophisticated. Is this deliberate, by which I mean that is your ethos the classic one of ‘if it’s not broke, don’t fix it’?
It is very complex underneath. But things like the search boxes and the search results are very important to us. We need a wide variety of buyers to be able to use it – students who want cheap textbooks, a collector who wants a first edition, a reader who wants a used reading copy and so on. Our search boxes are designed to be easy to use but we’re not afraid to change things if it is required.
17. Could you enlighten us as to future developments, if this isn’t confidential?
Not really.
18. We suppose from the UK perspective that ownership by Amazon is not generally known? Moreover it seems that their ownership is benign in as much as the identity of AbeBooks appears to be entirely separate. If correct could you enlighten us to the thinking behind this?
Amazon acquired AbeBooks in December 2008. The acquisition was widely reported. We do not hide the fact that we are part of Amazon. However, we operate as a stand-alone company and we are still headquartered in Victoria, BC, Canada where the company was founded in 1995. Amazon helps by sharing their vast knowledge of ecommerce with us.
19. From a UK perspective it seems that the creation and growth is a text book example of entrepreneurial spirit and prowess. Would you care to share your opinions on what are the key characteristics today which are the hallmarks of potentially successful entrepreneurs?
Entrepreneurs need to be able to recognise an opportunity, develop a strategy to take advantage of it and then work very, very, very hard.
20. Do you believe that entrepreneurship is an innate talent or can it be learned?
That’s hard to say. Entrepreneurs need to be good learners. We are still learning today – for instance the book world is changing with new formats and technologies, and we also have to constantly learn about the internet and how it changes.
21. Unless we’ve missed something it would appear to us that AbeBooks do not advertise or promote themselves in the conventional sense. Thus we conclude that yours is a classic case of success through viral marketing? Would you care to comment?
In the past, we have advertised in traditional outlets from the New York Times to The Guardian and bookish magazines. These ads were very, very expensive. We have covered many traditional means of advertising from bookmarks to booths at book fairs and festivals. We have also been dedicated to public relations.
Today, we are dedicated to online marketing through PPC (pay per click) advertising, search engine optimisation (making sure our pages appear in Google, Bing etc.) and email marketing. We still conduct traditional PR but that also includes working in social media – we have a vibrant blog, several thousand followers on Twitter and lots of friends on Facebook. Online marketing is very cost effective and everything is analytical. Results are measured and constantly evaluated.
22. Do you believe that viral marketing can be initiated or is it a consequence of happenstance, serendipity and an absence of bad luck?
Viral marketing is a skill. We produce extensive content about many aspects of books and authors. By content, I mean articles and lists, and these pages are picked up and linked to by bloggers, people on Facebook, people on Twitter and people on things like Digg and Stumbleupon. We work very hard on this and our content has generated thousands of in-bound links to our site over the years, and this in turn makes our site very strong in the search engines when someone is searching for things like signed books or first editions.
23. If it can be initiated do you have any guidelines you can offer budding entrepreneurs?
Spot the opportunity, work out that strategy and work hard.
24. Given your spectacular success from modest beginnings, do you see yourselves as a role model for latent entrepreneurs?
Not really but AbeBooks does have a culture of mentoring entrepreneurs who are at the start-up stage. We have helped a good number of local budding business people in the early stages of their careers.
25. Finally is there any message that you would like to give to our entrepreneur readership?
This might sound silly but AbeBooks depends on people who read. We are reading all the time about developments in ecommerce, developments in the internet and search engines, developments in bookselling and publishing and so on. We urge all entrepreneurs to read – books, magazines, blogs, newsletters . . . anything.
Thank you.
Abe Books can be found at www.abebooks.com
