Online marketplace Alibris announced last week it will go public. The company has a network of over 5,000 independent professional booksellers who sell used and hard-to-find books, with over 40 million listings. The company also purchases or consigns books (held in its distribution center), and purchases new books from book wholesalers.

The site launched in 1998 and, according to the prospectus, it has incurred significant losses and had negative cash flow from operations in each year from its inception through 2003. The company also disclosed that in 2003, revenue from its relationships with Amazon.com, Barnes&Noble.com, Books-A-Million, Borders, eBay, Half.com, Indigo/Chapters and Ingram Book Group accounted for approximately 40% of its total revenue. Retail sales outside of the U.S. and Canada account for about 11% of total revenue.

The company will use net proceeds from the offering, estimated to be $26.6 million, for growing product supply, expanding sales and marketing, investing in technologies and operations infrastructure, and possibly to acquire complementary technologies or businesses.

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