Amazon to acquire rare-book site AbeBooks

Amazon's book selection is about to grow bigger, older, and rarer. The company announced Friday that it will acquire AbeBooks.com, which specializes in out-of-print book sales.

No financial details of the acquisition were given, but Amazon, headquartered in Seattle, expects the deal to close before the end of its fourth quarter.

British-Columbia based AbeBooks, established in 1996, sells more than 110 million titles of used, rare, and out-of-print books listed by thousands of independent sellers around the world. In 2002, the company began to sell some books through Amazon's Marketplace program, which enabled its 13,500 book sellers to list inventory in Amazon.com's catalog.

Following the acquisition by Amazon, AbeBooks will continue to operate as a stand-alone company and will have control over its global Web sites.