Dive Brief:
- Bookshop.org on Tuesday launched a platform allowing consumers to purchase e-books from their local independent booksellers, according to a company announcement.
- The online bookstore platform said this is the first time independent booksellers will be able to sell e-books, taking direct aim at major players like Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
- The platform, which is available for use on the web or through Bookshop.org’s app, aims to feature more than 3 million e-books and includes work from all major publishers. Independent booksellers earn 100% of the profits from those sales.
Dive Insight:
Bookshop.org’s new e-book platform allows independent bookstores to benefit from the increasingly popular reading format.
The number of U.S. adults who read via e-book increased from 25% in 2019 to 30% one year later, according to a Pew Research study.
Customers using Bookshop.org’s e-book platform can designate a favorite local seller to buy from or allow Bookshop.org to handle the purchase. If a customer does not designate a particular bookseller, the profits are then shared by all participating bookstores. This opens up additional revenue streams for both sellers and authors, per the company.
Although the category has remained resilient, independent bookstores have faced challenges in recent years to compete on price with the likes of Amazon, Books-a-Million, and Barnes & Noble, which opened a 30,000-square-foot flagship in November in Washington, D.C.
Tapping into e-books, however, may help even out the playing field between major retailers and independent bookstores.
“Publishers determine e-book prices, and have rules against discounting, which is great for us because it means Amazon can’t undercut indie bookstore prices, like they do for physical books,” Bookshop.org founder and CEO Andy Hunter said in an email.
Bookshop.org was launched in 2020 by Hunter as a way to financially support local, independent bookstores. To date, it has raised over $35 million for local bookstores and distributes more than 80% of its profit margin to over 2,200 independent bookstores in the U.S., according to the brand.
“When we launched Bookshop.org, the vision was to support local bookstores in their battle against Amazon and other online retailers,” Hunter said in a statement, “This launch represents our commitment to bookstores and their communities. We’re focused on keeping bookstores afloat and helping them flourish in the digital age.”
Allowed to profit as a B Corp., Bookshop realizes 20% off the cover price through direct sales that don’t come through bookstores. It also can earn 10% off the cover price on sales through affiliates and will sell advertising and promotions to publishers. All of that, Hunter said, should be enough to cover the costs of running its platform, which he believes will be about $1 million a year.
"Many of our customers use e-books for their accessibility, especially for folks with low vision," Cierra Cook, owner of Spoke & Word Books, said in a statement. "Having an alternative to Amazon is groundbreaking."
