Amazon Acquires Abebooks

Somehow I missed the news last week that the company that gets most of my money, Amazon, is buying the company that gets the rest of my money, Abebooks:

Amazon has acquired twelve year old Canadian company Abebooks (formerly the Advanced Book Exchange), the companies just announced. AbeBooks is an online marketplace for books focusing on used, rare and out of print titles for sale by independent booksellers - it currently has 110 million books for sale from 13,500 sellers.

The company has been around since 1996 and fills a niche for Amazon in hard-to-find or out-of-print books. Rather than hold its own inventory, it acts as a digital marketplace for established booksellers.

The thing to watch is whether/how Amazon integrates its Amazon marketplace with Abebooks. Some sellers list on both sites, but there are major differences. The biggest difference from a buyer's perspective is that Amazon forces its sellers to charge a set shipping fee ($3.99) while Abebooks lets sellers choose their own (I've seen everything from free shipping to $8.00 per book).