The following message was posted to the message board of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers, and is reproduced here with the author's permission. - ZB
To whom it may concern:
Antikvariat Valentinska is a large antiquarian bookstore based in the centre of Prague, Czech Republic. We have been selling books through ZVAB for about 15 years now. In 2014, we joined AbeBooks; in 2015, ZVAB definitely ceased to exist as a distinct website for booksellers.
Meanwhile, Abebooks has become the largest and almost singular marketplace for selling antiquarian books on a worldwide basis. The simple truth is that whether someone likes it or not, there is no reasonable alternative to AbeBooks at the moment.
In all those years, we have done our best to satisfy our customers and to maintain the best seller rating. We have never encountered a major complaint, neither by our customers nor by the administrators of AbeBooks. Whatever money we have taken in, we have regularly shared the agreed upon portion of our profit with the owners. Currently, we offer more than 20,000 individual titles on AbeBooks, from the Late Middle Ages to brand-new books.
On Thursday, 18 October, we received the following email from the seller support of AbeBooks:
We are deeply concerned about this step, not only because of our own financial losses to come.
In light of the monopoly position of AbeBooks, closing all seller accounts in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary (as far as we know, these are the countries concerned) will basically mean nothing short of cutting these countries off from the worldwide trade with antiquarian books. Which countries will be next?
Whatever the reasons may be, the fair worldwide trade with antiquarian books will not profit from this step.
We therefore kindly ask the AbeBooks and Amazon administration to reconsider this unfortunate and discriminatory step.
Jan and Ondrej Schick
www.valentinska.cz
Antikvariát Valentinská
Valentinská 8
110 00 Praha 1 - Staré Město
Czech Republic
To whom it may concern:
Antikvariat Valentinska is a large antiquarian bookstore based in the centre of Prague, Czech Republic. We have been selling books through ZVAB for about 15 years now. In 2014, we joined AbeBooks; in 2015, ZVAB definitely ceased to exist as a distinct website for booksellers.
Meanwhile, Abebooks has become the largest and almost singular marketplace for selling antiquarian books on a worldwide basis. The simple truth is that whether someone likes it or not, there is no reasonable alternative to AbeBooks at the moment.
In all those years, we have done our best to satisfy our customers and to maintain the best seller rating. We have never encountered a major complaint, neither by our customers nor by the administrators of AbeBooks. Whatever money we have taken in, we have regularly shared the agreed upon portion of our profit with the owners. Currently, we offer more than 20,000 individual titles on AbeBooks, from the Late Middle Ages to brand-new books.
On Thursday, 18 October, we received the following email from the seller support of AbeBooks:
Effective November 30, 2018, AbeBooks will no longer support sellers located in certain countries. Your business is located in one of the affected countries and your AbeBooks seller account will be closed on November 30, 2018. We apologize for this inconvenience.The decision to close our account on such short notice has come as a complete shock, especially since no reason was not given even upon request. Just our company alone will almost certainly have to dismiss at least five employees. Furthermore, we do not have any idea where else to sell about 20,000 foreign books.
We are deeply concerned about this step, not only because of our own financial losses to come.
In light of the monopoly position of AbeBooks, closing all seller accounts in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary (as far as we know, these are the countries concerned) will basically mean nothing short of cutting these countries off from the worldwide trade with antiquarian books. Which countries will be next?
Whatever the reasons may be, the fair worldwide trade with antiquarian books will not profit from this step.
We therefore kindly ask the AbeBooks and Amazon administration to reconsider this unfortunate and discriminatory step.
Jan and Ondrej Schick
www.valentinska.cz
Antikvariát Valentinská
Valentinská 8
110 00 Praha 1 - Staré Město
Czech Republic
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