 | |
| Industry | E-commerce |
|---|---|
| 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 publisher 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 earned over $26 million for local stores and support has grown. In 2023, Bookshop.org has replaced IndieBound as the American Booksellers Association official platform for supporting independent, local bookstores when linking to books online. [4] As of 2023, Bookshop'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]
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. [10] 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 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 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 is, rather than benefiting them, a new long-term competitor in the publishing ecosystem. [11] 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. [12] 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]
While revenue from Bookshop.org may be 13–20% less profitable than if customers bought directly from an independent bookstore, but the stores do not have to pay the added overhead costs of fulfilling the orders themselves. [13]
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. It is considered one of the Big Five American technology companies; the other four are 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.
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 is 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 Foundation for Free Expression. A volunteer board of 10 booksellers governs the Association. Previously headquartered in White Plains, New York, ABA became a fully remote organization in 2024.
IndieBound is a marketing movement for independent bookstores launched in 2008 by the American Booksellers Association. With resources targeted for "indie" booksellers, it promotes fiscal localism. IndieBound's curated reading lists include the Indie Next List and the Indie Bestseller List.
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.
Glad Day Bookshop is an independent bookstore and restaurant located in Toronto, Ontario, specializing in LGBT literature. Previously located above a storefront at 598A Yonge Street for much of its history, the store moved to its current location at 499 Church Street, in the heart of the city's Church and Wellesley neighbourhood, in 2016. The store's name and logo are based on a painting by William Blake.
Bookselling is the commercial trading of books which is the retail and distribution end of the publishing process.
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.
African-American bookstores, also known as black bookstores, are bookstores owned and operated by African Americans. These stores often, although not always, specialize in works by and about African Americans and their target customers are often African Americans. Although they are a variety of African-American business, African-American bookstores have often been closely tied to radical political movements including Marxism, Black Power, and pan-Africanism. The first documented African-American bookstore was established by the abolitionist David Ruggles in 1834. The first African-American bookstore to open in Harlem was Young's Book Exchange. One of the earliest African-American bookstores to achieve national prominence was Lewis Michaux's African National Memorial Bookstore, which operated in Harlem from the early 1930s to the middle of the 1970s. Michaux's store doubled as a meeting place for black activists, including most famously Malcolm X. The Black Power movement embraced black-owned bookstores in the 1960s and 70s as vehicles for promoting their ideology and creating radical political spaces in black communities across the United States. By the 1990s, African-American bookstores earned significant attention from more politically moderate and business oriented media outlets such as the magazine Black Enterprise. In the 2000s and 2010s, however, as independent bookstores of all kinds declined and bookstores chains and Amazon increasingly sold black-authored books, the number of African-American bookstores declined rapidly, dropping from more than 250 to just over 70.
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.
