 | |
| Industry | E-commerce, Ebook |
|---|---|
| Founder | Andy Hunter |
Area served | United States and United Kingdom |
| Website | bookshop |
Bookshop.org is an online book marketplace launched in January 2020. Its stated mission is "to financially support local, independent bookstores." [1]
Bookshop, Inc., a privately held company, has been certified as a B Corporation.
Bookshop.org was founded by Andy Hunter, who had previously co-founded Literary Hub and Electric Literature . Hunter started working on the idea in 2018. [2]
The American Booksellers Association endorsed the company in 2019. [3] As of February 2023, 70% of its members were affiliated with Bookshop.org. [4]
After launching the site in January 2020, [5] [6] the business grew significantly during the COVID-19 pandemic. [7] [8]
On November 2, 2020, Bookshop.org opened a branch in the United Kingdom in partnership with wholesaler Gardners Books, which runs a similar profit sharing program with independent bookshops in that country. [9]
Since launch, the site has generated more than $33 million for local stores. In 2023, Bookshop.org replaced IndieBound as the American Booksellers Association's official platform for supporting independent, local bookstores when linking to books online. [4] As of 2023, Bookshop.org's booksales were about 1% of Amazon's, according to Hunter. [2] Hunter had set 1% or 2% of Amazon's sales as a goal as early as 2020. [3]
In January 2025, the company started selling e-books. [10] With the model being, "Bookstores can use the platform to sell ebooks directly to customers, and when they make a sale, the store gets all of the money. Customers can also browse all of the ebooks for sale on the website, then choose which bookstore to support with their purchase. In that case as well, the chosen bookstore gets all the money."
Bookshop.org, conceived as a response to Amazon's industry dominance, offers an online storefront with the accessibility and convenience of Amazon and, by convincing media outlets that review and advertise books to link to Bookshop.org instead through higher commissions and emphasis on its mission, intercept potential Amazon customers. [11] Bookshop.org, operating on an affiliate marketing model, receives and fulfills orders for independent booksellers through its online storefront and returns 30% off the cover price to the bookseller. Bookshop.org lets authors, publishers, and reviewers also sign up as affiliates and take home 10%. [7] Any purchases made directly on Bookshop (through an affiliate store or not) see 10% of sales go into a pool to be split up among independent booksellers. [7]
In 2020, Bookshop.org started partnering with audiobook site Libro.fm to direct Bookshop customers looking for audiobooks to buy directly on Libro's website. [2]
In 2023, Bookshop.org started to publish works to be available exclusively through their website and independent bookstores. [2]
At launch, some independent booksellers and independent publishers expressed concern that Bookshop.org was, rather than a benefit to them, a new long-term competitor in the publishing ecosystem, [12] as booksellers received a smaller commission through Bookshop.org than if the customer bought directly from the bookseller. [13] Other booksellers and authors, however, praised the effort citing the desire to have an alternative to Amazon for buying books online that supported local bookstores. [14] Time Magazine wrote that the pandemic helped to silence some critics by providing support to independent booksellers when in-person shopping was not an option for many people. [3]
Amazon.com, Inc., doing business as Amazon, is an American multinational technology company engaged in e-commerce, cloud computing, online advertising, digital streaming, and artificial intelligence. Founded in 1994 by Jeff Bezos in Bellevue, Washington, the company originally started as an online marketplace for books but gradually expanded its offerings to include a wide range of product categories, referred to as "The Everything Store". Today, Amazon is considered one of the Big Five American technology companies, the other four being Alphabet, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft.
Barnes & Noble Booksellers is an American bookseller with the largest number of retail outlets in the United States. The company operates approximately 600 retail stores across all 50 U.S. states.
Foyles, a trading name of Waterstones Booksellers Limited, is a bookseller with a chain of seven stores in England. It is best known for its flagship store in Charing Cross Road, London. Foyles was once listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the world's largest bookshop in terms of shelf length, at 30 miles (48 km), and of the number of titles on display. It was bought by Waterstones in 2018.
Waterstones Booksellers Limited, trading as Waterstones, is a British book retailer that operates 311 shops, mainly in the United Kingdom and also other nearby countries. As of February 2014, it employs around 3,500 staff in the UK and Europe. An average-sized Waterstones shop sells a range of approximately 30,000 individual books, as well as stationery and other related products.
Tattered Cover is a bookstore chain in Denver, Colorado. It was one of the largest independent bookstores in the United States. Tattered Cover is open seven days a week at all branches, hosts prominent book signings, and is known for its customer service. Together, the stores maintain an inventory of over half a million books. Its LoDo store houses an events space that can seat over 250 persons, while its East Colfax store can seat around 100.
The American Booksellers Association (ABA) is a non-profit trade association founded in 1900 that promotes independent bookstores in the United States. ABA's core members are key participants in their communities' local economy and culture, and to assist them ABA creates relevant programs; provides education, information, business products, and services; and engages in public policy and industry advocacy. The Association actively supports and defends free speech and the First Amendment rights of all Americans, without contradiction of equity and inclusion, through the American Booksellers for Free Expression. A volunteer board of 13 booksellers governs the Association. Previously headquartered in White Plains, New York, ABA became a fully remote organization in 2024.
Bookstore tourism is a type of cultural tourism that promotes independent bookstores as a group travel destination. It started as a grassroots effort to support locally owned and operated bookshops, many of which have struggled to compete with large bookstore chains and online retailers.
An independent bookstore is a retail bookstore which is independently owned. Usually, independent stores consist of only a single actual store. They may be structured as sole proprietorships, closely held corporations or partnerships, cooperatives, or nonprofits. Independent stores can be contrasted with chain bookstores, which have many locations and are owned by corporations which often have divisions in other lines besides bookselling. Specialty stores such as comic book shops tend to be independent.
AbeBooks is an e-commerce global online marketplace with seven websites that offer books, fine art, and collectables from sellers in over 50 countries. Launched in 1996, it specialises in used, rare and out-of-print books. AbeBooks has been a subsidiary of Amazon since 2008.
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books, which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process.
Dymocks Booksellers is an Australian-founded privately owned bookstore chain, that also specialise in CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray discs, e-books and related merchandising. As of June 2022, the chain has about 50 stores in Australia.
Gardners’ is an international wholesalers of books, eBooks, music and film. They work with multi-channel retailers worldwide, both online and on the high street, to supply physical and digital products. They offer back to store or direct to consumer on their behalf through a consumer direct fulfilment service.
The Silver Moon Bookshop was a feminist bookstore on Charing Cross Road in London founded in 1984 by Jane Cholmeley, Sue Butterworth, and Jane Anger. They established Silver Moon Bookshop to share intersectional feminist rhetoric with a larger community of readers and encourage open discussion of women’s issues. The shop served both as a safe space for women to participate in literary events and a resource center to learn about local feminist initiatives. The owners of Silver Moon Bookshop eventually expanded into the publishing field through establishing Silver Moon Books, as well as creating the store newsletter Silver Moon Quarterly.
Thalia is a chain of more than 200 book shops in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.
Google Play Books, formerly Google eBooks, is an ebook digital distribution service operated by Google, part of its Google Play product line. Users can purchase and download ebooks and audiobooks from Google Play, which offers over five million titles, with Google claiming it to be the "largest ebooks collection in the world". Books can be read on a dedicated Books section on the Google Play website, through the use of a mobile app available for Android and iOS, through the use of select e-readers that offer support for Adobe Digital Editions, through a web browser and reading via Google Home. Users may also upload up to 2,000 ebooks in the PDF or EPUB file formats. Google Play Books is available in 75 countries.
The Second Shelf is an independent bookshop in Soho, London with a focus on rare or rediscovered women's literature. It was founded in 2018 as a feminist bookshop. It also operates as an online bookshop. The name "The Second Shelf" comes from the title of Meg Wolitzer's 2012 essay in The New York Times Book Review about sexism towards women's fiction. It is a reference to The Second Sex, a book by Simone de Beauvoir.
Libro.fm is an audiobook app that splits its profits with an independent bookstore of the customer's choosing. In 2022, the company's publicity director Albee Romero told The Orange County Register that half of all profits go to the selected independent bookshop. It has created apps for Android, iPhone, and Apple Watch and is free of digital rights management, meaning all books can be downloaded on other devices without restrictions.
Birchbark Books, also known by its full name, Birchbark Books & Native Arts, is an independent bookstore in Minneapolis, Minnesota in the Kenwood neighborhood. Selling both books and works of art, it was founded by Pulitzer Prize–winning Native American novelist Louise Erdrich in 2001.
Astoria Bookshop is an independent bookstore in Queens. A LGBTQ-owned, woman-owned business founded by Lexi Beach in 2013, it sells books in various genres, hosts regular events with authors, facilitates a book club, and occasionally runs holiday book drives. Originally located on 31st Street in Astoria, it moved to a larger location on 30th Street in 2023.
