When we first reported on Bookshop, the online retailer was adamant about dismantling Amazon’s stranglehold on the book market and, in turn, directing money from digital sales to independent bookstores. But back in 2020 they were exclusively focused on print books. Now, on the occasion of the company’s five-year anniversary, they’re launching their own e-book platform, opening up another front in this David-and-Goliath bookselling war, one that takes direct aim at Amazon’s Kindle ecosystem.
The Bookshop e-book launch includes an app, available for iOS and Android (if you’re searching yourself in an app store, use the platform’s web address “Bookshop.org” to find it), but the purchased e-books can also be read on a standard web browser. The profit-sharing with independent bookstores is the same deal the company has for print books: If you select a specific independent bookstore as the recipient before you buy, they will get the full profit from that sale. If you don’t select a bookstore, that’s okay too: that profit then goes into a pool that’s split up among participating indie bookstores.
“This launch represents our commitment to bookstores and their communities,” Andy Hunter, Bookshop’s founder and CEO, said in a press release. “We’re focused on keeping bookstores afloat and helping them flourish in the digital age.”
It also represents Bookshop’s commitment to fighting Amazon specifically. When you buy e-books through Bookshop, you won’t be able to read them on e-reader devices or other apps like Amazon’s Kindle (with a few exceptions). The reverse is true, too: e-books purchased from Amazon can’t be transferred to Bookshop’s app. As Hunter explained to the Verge, there’s a possible antitrust case to be brought against Amazon if they don’t allow Bookshop’s independent bookstore-supporting e-books on their app and devices: “Because you own the hardware, you shouldn’t be forcing everyone to buy everything for that hardware from you.… [P]eople should be able to buy an ebook from any local bookstore and read it on their Kindle.”
Thanks to Bookshop, There Is No Reason to Buy Books on Amazon Anymore
Independent bookstores, and booksellers, get a lifeline just when they need it mostBut it’s not just Amazon that Bookshop is fighting in this particular battle. In order to keep e-book profits from going to tech companies, the retailer isn’t able to offer in-app book purchases. Instead, customers can add books they want to buy to a “Wishlist” in the app, but must complete the purchase by going to Bookshop’s website. The reason for that, as the company explains in its FAQ section? “Both Apple and Google require app developers who use in-app purchasing to pay 30% of their earnings from those purchases in fees. We want that money to be used to support local bookstores instead, so this extra step is required.”
While tech companies generally make decisions with the goals of maximizing profits and efficiency, Bookshop’s goal is to maximize the money that they can send to independent bookstores. There was an asterisk to that objective five years ago when the outfit launched with print book sales, as the best way to support your local book emporium is still to buy from them directly — the case for Bookshop is that we live in an e-commerce world, and small bookstores were getting crushed in that market. But there’s no such asterisk for e-books: they are completely digital and most independent bookstores don’t sell them at all, and thus previously didn’t make any money from them — so instead of supplementing their profits, with this expansion Bookshop is opening up a brand new revenue stream.
To counteract the minor inconveniences that come with Bookshop’s model, the company’s app developers have built in a few special features that will entice longtime e-book fans and newcomers alike. Along with being able to highlight, annotate and search within a book’s text, readers will be able to share favorite passages to social media through a unique quote generator.
Overall, Bookshop’s e-book experience may not be as seamless as Amazon, at least at the outset, but the goodwill that they’re fostering with readers who love their local bookstores will likely be enough to overcome that. How do I know? Just look at the mountain of cash they’ve been able to raise for these local literary institutions so far: over $35,785,000 at the time of writing. And it’s always going up.
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