Alasdair North – The viaLibri Blog

The fifth viaLibri Virtual Showcase is now open!

Today is the first day of the latest viaLibri Virtual Showcase…

This online book fair has many international booksellers taking part – and we’re introducing you to some of them here, and on social media – so take a look at their chosen highlights and their booths:

The Alta Collection

Specialists in early books and manuscripts related to William Shakespeare.

One highlight being: Manuscript fragment of Vincent of Lérins’ Commonitorium. A previously unknown manuscript written in Elizabethan handwriting with palaeographic features linking it closely to Shakespeare’s.

Plain Wrapper Press Redux

Specialists in finely-printed contemporary limited editions of poetry, short stories, and scholarly texts, illustrated with photogravures, wood engravings, silk-screen prints, and archival inkjet prints.

One highlight being: Declaration of Sentiments. A manifesto that emerged from the 1848 women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, re-published on its 175th anniversary.

Harrison-Hiett

Specialists in caricature, and illustrated items, Catholic and Anti Catholic material. Plus (as French residents) wine and winemaking!

One highlight being a ‘Showcase Exclusive’: Le Canard. A wonderful illustrated satirical attack on the Parisian aristocracy for their perceived disrespect following the funeral of Victor Hugo in 1885.

Crossroads Books

Specialists in occult and geology – books, maps, and ephemera.

One highlight being: The Occult Sciences. The Philosophy of Magic, Prodigies and Apparent Miracles. Going back to Egypt and the priesthood which was hidden from the public eye. It compares the author’s time to that time, and the Church hidden mysteries held by the priests.

Peter Austern & Co/ Brooklyn Books

Specialists in signed books and ephemera.

One highlight being a ‘Showcase Exclusive’: US Army Vietnam Combat Correspondent 1969-1970. A spiral bound album from SSGT Timothy F. Palmer, who was a military war correspondent. Many of the images are footnoted with a narrative, along with the photographs and Palmer’s uniform patches & Press ID cards.

La Bouquinerie du Varis

A generalist seller, based in beautiful Switzerland.

One highlight being: Eloge de la folie. Nouvellement traduit du latin par Pierre de Nolhac. In English ‘In praise of madness’. Newly translated from Latin by Pierre de Nolhac. Coloured images by Chas-Laborde. Magnificent binding signed Lucy Weith and dedication by the illustrator with a pencil drawing for the bookbinder.

Visit the Virtual Showcase Wednesday 8th October – Monday 13th October:

Browse rare works on paper from international dealers entirely at your convenience, at any time of the day, or night.
Start collecting, or expand your collection, discovering newly-listed items and hidden gems
Discover items which are ‘exclusive’ as they are not yet on the open market.
Search and filter using viaLibri’s advanced online tools, and tailor your search to match your collecting interests and budget.
Easily compare items and prices across booths and dealers, maximising value and saving time.

Head to the Showcase now!

Enter the showcase

View items exclusive to the showcase

Registration is open now for our October showcase

Time to mark your calendar with the dates for the next viaLibri Virtual Showcase:

Wednesday 8th October (3pm BST) – Monday 13th October (10pm BST).

With a selection of international booksellers offering hand-picked stock on all kinds of subjects, we hope you will join us for the next Virtual Showcase, and look forward to the fair opening on Wednesday October 8th.

As with our previous Showcase, the registration fee is $75, which allows you to list up to 60 items. There are no upfront charges beyond the registration fee – exhibitors only pay a small commission on items they sell. In addition, if you are a viaLibri Harvest subscriber then the registration fee will be waived. The only charges you will face will be the commission payments that are due if you make a sale.

You can learn more about how Showcase commissions work by clicking here.

Find out more

eBay auction data is now available through viaLibri

We are pleased to announce that, as of last week, live eBay auctions are now covered by viaLibri’s search engine. This is in addition to the “buy it now” listings which we covered already. viaLibri now fully covers all book listings on eBay.

The time sensitive nature of auctions means that they pair particularly well with our saved search service, Libribot. If you add the details of an item to your Libribot wants list then we will check several times a day to see if any matching eBay auctions have started. We’ll then email you details of the new listing.

Ready to get started? Simply search as usual. eBay auction results will now appear seamlessly alongside our other listings from more than 170 sites worldwide.

Register now for the February viaLibri Virtual Showcase

After a successful first outing, the viaLibri Virtual Showcase will be returning on February 20th. Register now to secure your place in the internet’s premier book fair.

Why register?

Unmatched access to viaLibri’s audience

Every day over 4,000 collectors, librarians and dealers from around the world come to viaLibri to search for old and rare books.
Every day our Libribot matches over 180,000 active wants with the search lists of over 18,000 registered users and subscribers. Links to your showcase items will be emailed directly to interested collectors.
Over 35,000 searches are executed daily on viaLibri.

A brand new, custom built, book fair system

The Virtual Showcase provides powerful search tools using flexible unlimited, multi-lingual categories and tags.
Upload up to 50 images per item.
Include links to your recent catalogue PDFs in your profile.
If your website is already being searched by viaLibri then you will be able to easily copy your listings into the Virtual Showcase.

Enhanced features for February 2025

Based on valuable feedback from December’s exhibitors we’re making the following changes to the platform:

Real-time statistics on page visits and item views will be available in the Exhibitor’s Dashboard.
Item descriptions can now include bold and italic text, as well as links.
The categories and tags browsing experience will be simplified to allow easier browsing.
We’ve added “Previous exhibitor” and “Next exhibitor” buttons to make it easier to browse all the booths in the showcase.
Several other small tweaks and bug fixes.

Discount for viaLibri subscribers

As before, there is a 20% discount on all registration fees for viaLibri Premium Services subscribers. If you are a subscriber and you are signed in to viaLibri with the correct account then this discount will be applied automatically when you register for the showcase.

Find out more

Seller’s location filter now available in Libribot

It’s been almost a year since we launched the redesigned version of viaLibri! Time has flown by, but rest assured that we’ve been constantly working behind the scenes on improvements to viaLibri.

One of the new features that we added when we redesigned the site was the ability to filter search results by the location of the seller. This can be very useful for those wanting to avoid costly international shipping charges, among other uses.

Today we are making this feature available in Libribot, our saved search system. Your wants can now make use of the seller location filter too.

If you’d like to add the seller’s location filter to a large number of wants then please get in touch with us. We’ll be happy to update your wants in bulk for you.

We’re hiring!

We are happy to announce that following another month of continued growth we are looking to expand our technical staff. We’re searching for a full stack developer who wants to work remotely. If you think you might be interested in joining us please check our our latest job announcement, recently posted here:

We are now happy to report that the openings have been filled.

“Date added” is now a sorting option for search results

A few weeks ago we quietly released an exciting new feature for viaLibri. You can now sort results by the date they were put up for sale. This is a change that a lot of people have asked for in the past, and we think it will be very useful for a lot of people.

Under the surface this has required quite a bit of work to get right, and it’s not without its limitations. The amount of information we get about a listing varies greatly depending on what site it’s listed on. For some sites we know exactly when an item was put up for sale, while for others we can pin it down to a 24 hour period. There are three sites (Amazon, Booklooker and Buchfreund) for which we don’t have enough information to even take a guess at when an item was added. As a result items from these sites will be shown right at the end of the results when you’re sorting by “date added”.

The results may also be a bit patchy if your search returns a large number of results. This is a result of how we fetch data from some websites. For example, we can fetch up to 50 results from antiquariat.de, but those will either be the most expensive 50 items that match your criteria, or the least expensive 50 items that match your criteria. We have no way of requesting the most recently added 50 items that match your criteria. So if your criteria are broad enough to match more than 50 items from antiquariat.de then they will be either the most or least expensive items. They will be shown in the order that they were put up for sale, but there’s no guarantee that they’re the most recent items put up for sale. As a result of this you’ll always get more useful results by using the most specific search criteria you can.

One further thing to note is that this new feature is only available when you start your search from our homepage. You won’t be able to pick “date added” as an option when reordering a search that’s already been completed.