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It was announced today by David Gower-Spence of the UK bookseller site www.booklovers.co.uk and Guy Weller of the international Bookseller Co-operative group The World Book Market (www.worldbookmarket.com) that the two Internet bookseller sites are to merge their business and on-line interests and assets, forming a single bookselling entity.

The World Book Market is a bookseller-owned co-operative of three years' lifespan which offers bookseller-members a wide range of software tools and utilities to assist them in listing and organizing their stock on multiple bookselling sites around the world.

Whilst it began as a "physical bookshop only" group, it has now expanded its membership into a blend of booksellers from both physical bookstore locations and those who sell books purely on-line.

Booklovers (UK), the creation of David Gower-Spence in 1997, is a commission-only (no monthly fee) bookselling site which has grown rapidly in the last 12 months, and now has around 100 booksellers listing there, with around 700,000 books listed on-line.

The merger (which will see the current 300,000 WBM book listings automatically carried in tandem at the Booklovers site) will push the Booklovers listings beyond the 1 million mark, which is the "entry point" qualification for specialist bookseller search engines like Addall and Bookfinder.

Mr Gower-Spence has joined the World Book Market (WBM) ownership team as part of this merger, and hereafter the two sites will be run centrally by the WBM.

Mr Gower-Spence is also joining the Executive Staff team at the WBM, and his programming and site-building skills will now be directed towards the development and expansion of both bookselling sites.

The WBM will continue to operate primarily as a bookseller software-services site, delivering its members (for a monthly fee) a wide range of free-access software utilities.

These include a sophisticated bookseller database package available free to members; the automated onloading of books and book-pictures to multiple sites where booksellers list; automated uploads into Amazon, eBay and the like; and a range of other software tools and utilities which will make listing online at multiple sites considerably easier for most booksellers.

The WBM's public selling site (which comes as part of the membership package) will be a monthly-fee only site, and it will not charge commissions on sales.

All joining members of the WBM will have all their listings automatically uploaded to the Booklovers site as well, and sales for them at that site will also be commission-free.

Booklovers (UK) will continue to operate across the joint file-servers of both groups as the "commission-only" alternative offered by the WBM for booksellers who do not wish to pay a monthly fee in order to access the software tool-kit of the WBM, but who wish to gain access to the sites and member-facilities operated by the group on a "risk-free" basis.

Commission on sales at Booklovers will remain at the present modest level of 10% on all sales achieved on the site, with no other fees or costs attached.

Both sites will benefit greatly from the joint inputs of the present WBM programming team, and Mr Gower-Spence's continued inputs, particularly in the matter of Google promotion and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) across both bookselling sites, in which area Mr Gower-Spence brings particular expertise to the group.

Guy Weller, of the WBM, said today of the completed merger plan: "We at the WBM are delighted at the agreed site-merger, and believe that the extra choice-set offered to our bookseller members by having the two sites running in tandem, and automatically cross-linked in various ways, will stand to the benefit of just about all booksellers, anywhere in the world."

"There is a crying need for a quality bookselling site which also focuses on the software and support needs of its bookseller-members, as well as simply listing their books for sale on the Internet."

"Both the WBM and Booklovers are entirely bookseller-owned and managed sites, and this gives us the right sort of management perspective on behalf of our members around the world," Mr Weller said.

David Gower-Spence, of Booklovers, said: The synergies between our two businesses were obvious and I am delighted to bring them together - with a genuine book-seller ethos designed to offer good quality, well described second hand (and new, of course) books in the increasingly muddied waters of the second hand book market on the Internet.

"Together, we are stronger and can move forward more quickly to the benefit of fellow book dealers and all our customers."

Further details and commentary, and the ability to record expressions of interest and other comments or questions by and from interested booksellers, may be found at the Open Forum at the WBM at www.worldbookmarket.com/forum