Borders Group, Inc. was an American multinational book and music retailer based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, United States. In its final year, the company employed about 19,500 people throughout the U.S., primarily in its Borders and Waldenbooks stores.
Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller. It is a Fortune 1000 company and the bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. As of July 7, 2020, the company operates 614 retail stores across all 50 U.S. states.
Book collecting is the collecting of books, including seeking, locating, acquiring, organizing, cataloging, displaying, storing, and maintaining whatever books are of interest to a given collector. The love of books is bibliophilia, and someone who loves to read, admire, and a person who collects books is often called a bibliophile but can also be known as an bibliolater, meaning being overly devoted to books, or a bookman which is another term for a person who has a love of books.
W & G Foyle Ltd. is a bookseller with a chain of seven stores in England. It is best known for its flagship store in Charing Cross Road, London. Foyles was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest bookshop in terms of shelf length, at 30 miles (48 km), and of number of titles on display. It was bought by Waterstones in 2018.
Chapters Inc. is a Canadian big box bookstore banner owned by Indigo Books and Music. Formerly a separate company competing with Indigo, the combined company has continued to operate both banners since their merger in 2001. As of July 2017, it operated 89 superstores under the banners Chapters and Indigo, and 122 small format stores under the banners Coles, Indigospirit, SmithBooks and The Book Company.
Coles is a Canadian bookstore chain owned by Indigo Books and Music. Coles currently serves as Indigo's brand for small-scale bookstores in locations such as shopping malls. Some locations are operated as SmithBooks, and the company has recently begun to open selected small-format locations as "IndigoSpirit".
Waldenbooks, operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain, from 1995 as a subsidiary of Borders Group. The chain also ran a video game and software chain under the name Waldensoftware, as well as a children's educational toy chain under Walden Kids. In 2011, the chain was liquidated in bankruptcy.
AbeBooks is an e-commerce global online marketplace with seven websites that offer books, fine art, and collectables from sellers in over 50 countries. Launched in 1996, it specialises in used, rare and out-of-print books. AbeBooks has been a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008.
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process. People who engage in bookselling are called booksellers, bookdealers, bookpeople, bookmen, or bookwomen. The founding of libraries in c. 300 BC stimulated the energies of the Athenian booksellers.
Dillons was a British bookseller founded in 1936, named after its founder and owner Una Dillon. Originally based in Bloomsbury in London, the company expanded under subsequent owners Pentos in the 1980s into a bookselling chain across the United Kingdom. In 1995 Pentos went into receivership and sold Dillons to Thorn EMI, which immediately closed 40 of the 140 Dillons bookstore locations. Of the remaining 100 stores, most kept the name Dillons, while the remainder were Hatchards and Hodges Figgis. Within Thorn EMI, Dillons was placed in the HMV Group, which had been a division of Thorn EMI since 1986. EMI demerged from Thorn in August 1996, and Dillons-HMV remained an EMI holding. Dillons was subsumed under rival chain Waterstones' branding in 1999, at which point the brand ceased to exist.
De Slegte is an Almere, Netherlands-based store chain that sells and buys new books, secondhand books and study books. Between 1 July 2013 and 19 March 2014 De Slegte and another chain of bookstores, Selexyz, combined forces as Polare. After Polare Nederland went bankrupt in 2014, the Belgian branches were bought back by the De Slegte family and changed to their original names. Four branches in Belgium continue to operate, three branches in the Netherlands were added.
Exclusive Books is one of South Africa's largest bookselling chains with stores throughout South Africa, and one store in Gaborone, Botswana and one in Windhoek, Namibia. As of 1 December 2013, the chain is owned and operated by a private group of investors. It was previously owned by the Times Media Group (TMG), after TMG took control of Avusa.
Parnassus on Wheels is a 1917 novel written by Christopher Morley and published by Doubleday, Page & Company. The title refers to the Mount Parnassus of Greek mythology; it was the home of the Muses.
Eason Retail PLC, known as Easons or Eason, is an Irish retail company best known for selling books, stationery, cards, gifts, newspapers and magazines. Headquartered in Swords, County Dublin, it is the largest supplier of books, magazines, and newspapers in Ireland.
QBD Books, originally Queensland Book Depot and formerly "QBD" The Bookshop!, is a large chain of bookshops in Australia, with the majority of stores found in the states of Queensland and New South Wales. The business started in the late 1890s as a means for the Uniting Church to sell religious texts. However over the years the consumer market changed and the business was sold to the Robinson family in 1991.
Book store shoplifting is a problem for book sellers and has sometimes led stores to keep certain volumes behind store counters.
Thalia is a chain of more than 200 book shops in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
The selling of books dates back to ancient times. The founding of libraries in c.300 BC stimulated the energies of the Athenian booksellers. In Rome, toward the end of the republic, it became the fashion to have a library, and Roman booksellers carried on a flourishing trade.
