Hundreds of booksellers have taken ‘vacation’ from the secondhand books marketplace due to it dropping sellers from countries such as Russia and South Korea
The motto of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, “Amor librorum nos unit” or “love of books unites us”, has been adopted as a battle cry this week by an army of hundreds of secondhand booksellers around the world. From Australia to Mexico, they have united in a flash strike against Amazon, after its secondhand books marketplace AbeBooks announced it will withdraw from markets including South Korea and Russia, which booksellers fear will devastate local businesses.
Booksellers in Hungary, the Czech Republic, South Korea and Russia were told by AbeBooks that from 30 November, it would “no longer support sellers located in certain countries”. “We apologise for this inconvenience,” added the marketplace, which was founded in 1995 and acquired by Amazon in 2008.
The move was, said booksellers Jan and Ondrej Schick of Antikvariát Valentinská in Prague, a “complete shock” and means they will “almost certainly have to dismiss at least five employees. It also leaves them no outlet to sell around 20,000 books that aren’t in Czech, which are harder to sell in store.
The Schicks contacted the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB), which mobilised its members – including British bookseller Simon Beattie, who proposed a mass demonstration of solidarity with those affected by AbeBooks’s withdrawal, by taking what he described as a “vacation” from using the website. Now, around 2.6m books from more than 460 booksellers in 26 countries are now listed as “temporarily unavailable”.
“I think what sparked my initial action, and my hope that other booksellers might follow suit, was simply the gross unfairness of it all: a high-handed blanket approach from Abe, at such short notice, ending with a perfunctory ‘We apologise for this inconvenience’,” said Beattie. “Many booksellers rely on sales through Abe to stay in business.”
ILAB president Sally Burdon, who is meeting with AbeBooks this week to discuss the situation, said the Schicks’ story has struck a chord.
