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Book Stacks Unlimited Was a Precursor to Amazon.com's Online Bookstore

1992

In 1992 Charles M. Stack founded Book Stacks Unlimited, an online bookstore selling new physical books. Stack's store began as a dial-up bulletin board located in Cleveland, Ohio. It moved to the Internet as Books.com, eventually attracting a half million visitors each month. This was two years before Jeff Bezos founded Amazon.com.

"Stack devised the concept in 1991 based on his personal fascination with reading and books, as he recalled in 1998:

"I've always read a lot, so that was the germ of the idea. I'll pick a subject and read every book ever published on it. That's hard to do if you shop at a walk-in bookstore. Even the superstores don't have more than a couple of titles per topic. My dream was to have a bookstore that had every book ever published to feed my own habit.

"Offering 500,000 titles, Book Stacks had 35 staffers who gave their book recommendations to visitors. Other features included a daily literary journal, summaries of new books, RealAudio interviews with authors and forums in which customers could ask questions and discuss books. Books could be searched by title, author, subject, keyword or ISBN number.

"In 1996, Book Stacks became a wholly owned subsidiary of Cendant Corporation, a consumer services company based in Stamford, Connecticut and previously known as CUC International. In 1997, Book Stacks became part of Cendant's virtual mall, netMarket, a one-stop Internet shopping site which included an online music store and an online video store, both operating from the Book Stacks offices in downtown Cleveland.

"Subsequently, it was purchased by Barnes & Noble; www.books.com now redirects to www.barnesandnoble.com" (Wikipedia article on Book Stacks Unlimited, accessed 11-08-2013).

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