There was no word on how much barnesandnoble.com (BNBN) paid for the domain, which was bought from Cendant Corp. (CD). The site had previously been a small online book retailer run by Cendant.

Vistors to the books.com URL are met with a welcome by barnesandnoble.com and a link to its homepage. In the future, www.books.com will be an alias to reach the barnesandnoble.com front door.

"With this purchase, barnesandnoble.com now owns the two URLs most associated with books -- www.bn.com and www.books.com," said Carl Rosendorf, senior vice president, barnesandnoble.com. "We see this agreement with Cendant as a way to provide a superior shopping experience for Books.com's broad base of book buyers."

Also as part of the deal, barnesandnoble.com will develop cross-marketing relationships with other Cendant properties including ShoppersAdvantage.com and DaysInn.com, which will become part of the barnesandnoble.com Affiliate Network.