AbeBooks closes accounts and withdraws from several markets

On 18 October 2018, AbeBooks sent the following announcement to booksellers in various countries such as the Czech Republic and Hungary:

"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."

ILAB was subsequently informed about this issue and immediately started communicating with AbeBooks asking for clarity and more detail.

ILAB urges booksellers who are affected to get in touch with AbeBooks Account Manager Udo Göllmann or to contact the ILAB committee via email.

AbeBooks statement as of 27 October 2018:

We recently announced to sellers in certain countries that AbeBooks will no longer be able to support them effective November 30, 2018. This included 4 countries with national associations that are members of ILAB: Czech Republic, Hungary, South Korea, Russia.

We sincerely regret having to take this action but it is no longer viable for us to operate in these countries due to increasing costs and complexities.

We continue to support sellers in all other 18 of the 22 countries with national associations that are members of ILAB (i.e. Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, United States).

Any ILAB affiliated seller in any country with questions about this change is invited to reach out to me directly (email: ugoellmann@abebooks.com), and I’ll be happy to help them. We highly value our relationships to ILAB affiliated sellers because they offer unique selection and adhere to the highest standards, and we will continue to search for ways to support sellers from a greater selection of countries.

ILAB will provide a further update shortly.