It’s our Birthday!

And this is how We are Celebrating

It’s unbelievable, but on May 16th 2022 MVB turned 75. And yet we do not feel all that old. In any event, it is a great reason to celebrate. Using the motto "Here’s to now!" we want to showcase what is important to us, along with the things we’re continuing to achieve together with many incredible book lovers all around the world.

We are raising a toast to ideas and success stories that move us forward, and highlighting innovations and technologies we can use to create new things together. We are thanking all our partners for their many years of active support, and applauding the networks we have come to rely on. And of course: three cheers for books!

We have planned a number of surprises that will allow us to celebrate together. So do not forget to take a look at our website and social media channels from time to time.

Our GIFs for Facebook and Instagram

Hurrah, our first birthday surprise has gone live! We came up with a unique idea for our 75th birthday: our own collection of GIFs developed together with our colleagues, who appear as live-action testimonials. Not everyone can say that, right?

These and other bookish GIFs are now available through our brand-new GIPHY account, and they’re just waiting to be used on various platforms: www.giphy.com/mvbbooks

They can be added quickly and imaginatively to Facebook and Instagram stories using story stickers.

You can find our birthday GIFs under the following tags:
MVB, MVBBooks and I love MVB.

Have fun as you try them out!

Our Milestones

1947 to 2002 – Buchhändler-Vereinigung
  • 1947: Founding as Buchhändler-Vereinigung
  • 1969: Introduction of the ISBN in Germany
  • 1971: First printed edition of the Verzeichnis Lieferbarer Bücher (VLB), the catalogue of books in print in the German-speaking world: two volumes, 152,526 titles, 1,104 publishers
  • 1981: Launch of Bücherscheck, Germany’s nationwide book-voucher programme
  • 1985: First issue of Buchjournal, the customer magazine for German-language booksellers
  • 1988: The VLB appears for the first time on CD-ROM
  • 1997: buchhandel.de, the VLB’s public platform, goes online
  • 2002: The VLB launches an online platform
2002 to 2017 – MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels
  • 2003: New corporate name: MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels GmbH
  • 2004: The VLB now contains more than one million titles
  • 2007: Industry platform libreka! goes online allowing full-text searches
  • 2008: Non-books can be ordered through the VLB using EANs
  • 2009: E-books are available through libreka!
  • 2011: The VLB becomes the official reference database for retail prices
  • 2014: Introduction of subject classifications in the VLB
  • 2015: Zeilenwert acquires libreka!
  • 2016: Second business location in Brazil and start of the Metabooks project
    • Premiere at Frankfurter Buchmesse of Livro, the collective stand for small and self-publishers
    • First MVB Data Summit
    • Digital preview tool VLB-TIX is launched
  • 2017: Metabooks goes online in Brazil
    • Third location in the US: acquisition of Pubnet and Pubeasy
2018 to 2022 – MVB
  • 2018: Launch of the new Pubnet platform
    • MVB Marketing- und Verlagsservice des Buchhandels GmbH becomes MVB GmbH
  • 2019: MVB is recognised as Top Innovator
    • Fourth location: MVB begins cooperating with Mexican publishers’ association
  • 2021: Introduction of the new BÜCHER Gutschein (book voucher)
    • Launch of the new Pubeasy platform
    • Introduction of the Reading Rationales classification system in the VLB
  • 2022: Fifth location: acquisition of the ordering systems from Nielsen BookData in the UK