AbeBooks Buys Online Store Company

-- Publishers Weekly, 4/9/2008 11:58:00 AM

AbeBooks has acquired Chrislands, a Burke, Vir.-based business that builds, hosts and maintains online bookstores. The company specializes in building e-commerce store fronts for both bricks-and-mortar stores as well as individual booksellers. It currently hosts more than 1,000 stores, and the majority of Chrislands’s clients are used booksellers in the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia.

The company will remain in Virginia under the direction of cofounders Lance Christen and Jaymes Sorbel. The purchase will give Chrislands clients access to various AbeBooks services, including adding their inventory to BookFinder, AbeBooks’s book price comparison search engine.