Online retailer Abebooks.com has acquired a major (40 percent) stake in book social networking site LibraryThing.com. LT gives booklovers a way to catalog their own libraries online and a network focused on books.
The site was launched in August 2005 and has more than 35,000 members with more than 2.7 million books in catalog. This deal follows two recent acquisitions by Canada-based Abebooks: price comparison website BookFinder.com in November and book inventory and order management company FillZ in February.
From the LT founder’s blog post about the deal: “I want to make it clear I did not just get rich. (I’m walking away with just enough to cover my legal fees and some new shirts for Book Expo America, where we’re announcing this.) I did this to grow the site, and to have some security that I could keep doing what I love for years to come.”