Independent Online Booksellers Association Celebrates 25th Anniversary
With a worldwide membership of over 300 independent sellers of rare, used, and new books and ephemera, the Independent Online Booksellers Association marks 25 years of work in 2024.
For 2024, the organization is launching a separate IOBA Foundation, a nonprofit, tax-exempt institution “established for the purpose of providing continuing education for the worldwide community of independent online booksellers, as well as to promote diversity in the trade through scholarships and mentoring opportunities.”
The IOBA is an international non-profit trade organization founded in 1999 to support ethical and professional online bookselling.
Prior to the Internet, experienced book dealers had created accurate book descriptions for use in catalogues, using agreed-upon terminology and recognized standards of grading and passing this knowledge down. By 1999, there were online sellers copying the language of professionals, often without knowing what it meant. Others didn't know enough about the profession to be aware that any specialized terminology or standards existed. The original founders of the IOBA saw a need to somehow translate this generational standard into the online world.
To do so, the IOBA established and is dedicated to maintaining both a Book Buyers Bill of Rights and a Code of Ethics for its members. The IOBA provides scholarships, education, mentoring, and support to its members. Furthermore, it has an ethics committee to investigate any rare complaints from people who buy from IOBA members.
Over the years and today, the IOBA continues to represent independent booksellers. The IOBA formally challenged monopolistic companies like Amazon for its parity pricing pressure in the EU, over a decade before the United States FTC anti-monopoly lawsuit filed in September of 2023. In September of 2023, in light of new censorship under the Texas Reader Act, the IOBA formally endorsed the American Library Association’s Freedom to Read Statement.
Readers can find information on the IOBA’s continuing work, ethical bookselling, and cautionary tales published in trade magazines and on the IOBA website.
