
Thanks to Bookshop, indies stand a chance against Amazon - fraXis
https://www.insidehook.com/article/bookshop-independent-bookstores-amazon
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treebog
I bought a book on bookshop last week. It was $5 more than on Amazon, and
bookstores got $1.80 from my purchase. I should have just bought the book on
Amazon and mailed four dollar bills to my local bookstore—everyone would have
come out ahead.

~~~
mangodrunk
I'm not sure I see the point either. I want to shop at my local bookstore. The
one that is a 10 minute walk from my place. Bookshop seems like an amazon
clone but they donate to independent bookstores. Well, amazon has smile, so I
don't see how this is better. Perhaps I missed something.

~~~
soapdog
When you allow a company like Amazon to control that much of the publishing
business, you end up with some real problems. Among them, these are some very
important ones:

* Amazon can dictate with their recommendation engine and promoted shelf what books you'll read. They can bury authors and whole topics and since they control so much of the market, these other books don't get a fighting chance to actually be seen, let alone bought. I'm not saying all books are the same. All stores prepare their shelves and exposure tables with care, but when you have multiple stores with different curators, the net effect of this is a variety of exposure. You can go to two indie stores on the same street and get a complete different experience in terms of what they recommend. Even though their recommendation engine does its best to place you in front of books that people like you enjoyed, that just create filter bubbles and echo chambers. It is good to be exposed to something else even if just to browse and decide to buy something different later.

* With it's quasi-monopoly, Amazon can dictate terms to publishers and authors alike. Royalties are always bad unless your self-publishing but Amazon can also extend that bad aspect of the business towards not only authors but publishers themselves. Negotiating with a company that owns the market is not really negotiating, it is compromising to unfair contracts.

* Have you tried buying an eBook from Amazon and adding it to a non-kindle device legally? What about DRM? Amazon vertical control of their eBook platform where they are the shop, the hardware supplier, and the only way to consume that content is much like Apple vertical control of iOS. New eReader companies have a hard time trying to survive the market because they can't read the books offered by the company that controls most of the market. It is quite refreshing to pick a device that supports ePubs and buying a non-DRM ePub from a publisher and just reading it without walled gardens.

* A big part of the bookshop experience is curation and the relationships you establish there if you're fortunate enough to be in near a shop that has events and fosters a local community. Don't get me wrong, books are products as well and selling them just like you sell shoes is a legitimate way of doing business, but it can be more than that. I've discovered many good books completely outside of my usual taste by going to events in bookshops and having interaction with real humans. If local bookshops die, this kind of experience dies with them.

So in the end it is not about using "bookshop" to avoid "Amazon", it is about
keeping local shops alive so that the experiences and features they offer and
that can't be replicated with a cold robotic Amazon shop, cease to exist.

There are many other problems with Amazon that goes beyond the book part of
their business. Amazon is too big and companies working on that scale tend to
be uncaring and treat their workers bad as you can't grow that large and not
be playing the ROI and spreadsheets game of how much value can my capitalist
practices can extract from both my clients and my workers.

On the other hand, local shops tend to more caring towards their clients and
their workers. That is not an absolute and I've seen my fair share of horrible
local shops as well, but for each one of those, there a many more shops run by
people who actually love books and you can't have a good publishing industry
if people who love books are no longer in every part of the supply chain. If
all those people are in just half of the supply chain as authors, publishers
and readers, but the commerce part becomes dominated by a single company, your
overall industry quality will suffer IMHO.

~~~
mangodrunk
Really good points!

I definitely support the indie bookstores, and have been exclusively using
them around my area for quite some time (only wish I was doing this sooner,
how dumb was I before to be using amazon so much). They may not typically have
books that I am interested in, technical books, but I do use the web to find
those and all the stores support ordering books online that I then can pick up
in the store. Though the price is typically more than amazon's, but it's worth
it to me.

I do enjoy the curation that they have at the shops, and it is great to find a
book that I probably would have not have found otherwise.

I also would like to support small businesses over larger corporations,
because to your last paragraph, I also think it's important of part of that
supply chain to reap the benefits of their labor (the store owner) and have
more creativity and autonomy over what they do.

So, I wouldn't want to support Bookshop (and especially amazon when it comes
to books), and would rather just support my local bookstore which can do
everything that Bookshop or amazon can do. Not sure why we would want a middle
layer that takes most of the money and then gives money out to stores like
charity.

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soapdog
Brazilians have been enjoying the exact same setup for more than a decade. The
estante virtual (virtual shelf) site is exactly that, a single store front
where you can search and buy books which are fulfilled from indie bookstores
throughout the country. In our case, since books are often rare and expensive,
the website is mostly focused towards the second-hand books market (which is
huge in Brazil, specially academic and specialized books) but it also sells
new books.

I'm sure other countries have similar setups. I've heard that in Germany,
Amazon never really got that much of a foothold as there is a system of
fulfilment between the various bookshops where you can order on your local
shop and have the book arrive there in couple days from a different unrelated
shop using the same system.

It always surprise me how American tech ecosystem reinvents the wheel from
other countries and then proceed to make huge deal out of it as if they
invented sliced bread all over again. If people looked away from the U.S. and
into home grown, grassroots, little tech startups from different countries,
they'd find a plethora of new ideas and solutions.

~~~
Roritharr
Amazon is absolutely dominating in Germany. Although what you otherwise said
is true, we could also always order via ISBN Numbers from any small bookstore,
there just wasn't a good way to search before the internet became mainstream.

~~~
phhedinkus
I moved to Germany about two years ago from the US. I have used Amazon a lot
to help me get settled here. I’d like to move away from them but English books
seem like the hardest thing to find off their platform. Do you know of an
alternative?

~~~
riedel
Use amazon search/reviews and then use the ISBN to shop anywhere (I would
promote Buch7 as a social book shop knowing its not the best for English
books). Your local book shopde will also order most things for you. (Call
them, they call you back when the book arrived). The big problem is that
English books are not fixed price in Germany ...

~~~
phhedinkus
Ahh ok, this is helpful. Thanks!

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xrd
What studies discuss how money flows internally and permanently out of an
economy? This seems tangential here.

I recall an article/conversation long ago about how open source consulting
projects keep money local. IIRC, the argument was that paying someone to
develop open source software for a government project leads to that money
being cycled around six times inside the local economy, as opposed to money
leaving the local economy.

For example, if you buy Oracle's database (and associated consulting) for that
municipal government accounting project for the city government of Smalltown,
USA, then all that money leaves that economy permanently.

If instead the city council of Smalltown, USA can be convinved to hire a few
weird local Perl programmers to build it that money will go into their bank
account at the local credit union. That credit union will then loan out that
money, and multiply it inside the local economy there. That Perl programmer
will go down to the pub, and spend money there, and on groceries (and not
Amazon), etc.

There are complications to doing it local (Perl programmers aren't great
salespeople), but in Oregon we were bitten by Oracle and it turned out to not
be cost effective at least:
[https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2016/09/post_183.html](https://www.oregonlive.com/politics/2016/09/post_183.html).
Oregon tax payers paid $240M to Oracle. Oracle settled for $100M, but let's be
straight: $75M of that is Oracle software. You cannot find Oracle software
being exchanged for pizza at any brew pubs here.

It seems like buying local is keeping money local. But, I never hear people
talking about it that way, other than in that random open source advocacy
discussion.

I cannot find that link, and perhaps it was only a dream I had, but this makes
sense to me logically.

~~~
hantusk
Don't have a link to a study, but would also appreciate a good one of anyone
is into this.

From my understanding of economics, the idea is that, optimizing for local
money is suboptimal. Compare that to Smalltown finding their own
niches/specialization and earning more money from that to purchase Oracle
software. Smalltowns will end up having more value by exporting what they are
good at, and importing what they need from the area/company that is best at
what they are good at.

~~~
josinalvo
When theory does not match experience, do we throw away theory or experience?

That is, when we see the local economy drying up again and again, and towns in
permanent recession, disappearing, do we just keep doing what the theory says.

Besides, the theory does not say "open economy is good for everyone". It says,
at most, with its caveats and conditions, "open economy is good to maximize
global wealth", the sum of the wealth of all the participants.

Maybe that benefits smalltown (good), or maybe a chinese smalltown more than
it hurts smalltown (still good, but a though time convincing smalltown to go
along against their interests).

Maybe that benefit Jeff Besos more than it harms smalltown (in dollar terms,
that are the issue the theory is about).

Saying that the economy produces good results is like saying evolution
produces good results: true, as far as it goes, but your blind god optimize
for things you care only incidentally, and often not at all (see also:
covid-19 :P)

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chrisseaton
Did someone really call their bookshop 'Bookshop'?

And I really don't get it - printed books are commodities. They're the same
wherever you get them. Anyone except the author is a middleman. Independent
bookshops can't value-add anything except in-person, and even then it's
limited to creating a nice environment.

I love my local bookshop, and we're buying from them during the crisis to be
delivered, but being honest with myself it's because of the toast they do
rather than anything to do with books.

(Doesn't apply to second-hand booksellers.)

~~~
wenc
Yes, a big part of what local bookshops offer is the physical environment.
Mine (near the University of Chicago) does book events, which is why I keep
supporting them.

Good bookstores also provide a free service: curation. Really good bookstores
are usually small, located near a good university and are run by book-loving
alumni who never left the area. Small is important -- limited space means
having to be super selective with inventory. A good bookstore display can give
you a sense of the zeitgeist, a feeling for what thinking people are
interested in at the moment. There's nothing more pleasant than spending a
Saturday afternoon stumbling across new ideas in the stacks.

Unfortunately, you're right -- all these things can now be had online.
Curation and bibliophile owners? Follow interesting people like Tyler Cowen
(Marginal Revolution) and you'll get some of the best book recommendations
around. Book event? Can be done via video conference.

All that's left is the physical environment, and now that's gone too.

~~~
lucas_membrane
The first big chunk of value added for independent bookshops is that they are
not Amazon. That is enough for me. I avoid Amazon. But there are a few
possible other pieces of value to add that the other sellers might add, but
they are not doing it.

How about, if a bookseller does absolutely no business with Amazon or any of
its affiliates, ever, they advertise that so that I can favor them with mine.
That would be a value-added.

Now, I have bought many used books from Alibris, since I stopped buying from
Abebooks when I learned that Amazon owns Abebooks, but now I find that Alibris
has a deal with Amazon to ship the books that I buy from independent
booksellers who list on Alibris through Amazon's shipping system. And part of
the deal seems to be that any bookseller who lists both on Amazon (or
abebooks) and on Alibris always lists the book a little higher on Alibris, and
shipping always costs a little more if I buy through Alibris, too. So the
independents, who present themselves as wanting to compete with Amazon, are
being lured into supporting both the giant and the giant's ability to manage
prices throughout the market. If an independent bookseller wants to offer any
value beyond what Amazon offers, they should stay out of Amazon's network and
sell used books that Amazon's network does not offer.

When I want to buy a used book that I find on-line that was published with one
or more CD's included, I have often contacted the bookseller and asked if
their copy of the book has the CD included. If the bookseller is one that
lists through abebooks, Amazon, or Alibris, either my inquiry is ignored or
the response is that they cannot access their inventory to answer my question,
and that their terms of sale are that the CD might not be included, no matter
how essential it may be to the value of the book. This uniformity of poor
service across supposedly-competing sellers is suspicious at best, and an
independent bookseller could certainly offer value added by not doing what
everyone else is doing.

Bottom line is that it is possible for bookshop to be better than Amazon for
some buyers, but I'll wait to see it before I believe it.

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dahdum
Cool concept, but the books I compared were 20-50% higher than Amazon, and
they charge another $3.50 to ship in 7-10 days.

~~~
throwaway_pdp09
Haven't read the article but like what you say, I tried to get a book from
waterstones, a UK bookshop on my high street. I don't mind paying 20% or 25%
extra as I don't like amazon and I do want to support local bookshops but when
they cost that much more and they don't have it in stock and can't tell me
when they will get it in, I say screw you and go with amazon.

~~~
tartoran
In order to avoid amazon I get my books from abebooks. Sadly today I just
found out Abebooks is owned by Amazon.

~~~
jrmg
Alibris is basically the same thing and not owned by Amazon.

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ilamont
This is an interesting concept. Fulfillment is handled through wholesaler
Ingram, which works if the book is in Ingram's catalogue, but not for titles
gathering dust on the shelves or in a back room.

Also, my experience with shipping via Ingram is it's slower.

Certainly not an Amazon (books) killer, but it certainly gives an option to
indie bookstores which can't bother with their own website.

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teruakohatu
So this turns bookstores into super affiliates? Also while sharing a pool of
secondary affiliate revenue.

I am a heavy user of Amazon's Abebooks. When I buy from there bookstores get
92% of the revenue, and bear the costs.

Surely a model like this for new books is better than bookstore.org model?

~~~
dublinben
If you'd rather not enrich Amazon with your used book purchases, I recommend
checking out Alibris. It's a marketplace just like Abebooks, and I've found
that many of the same big name sellers are on both platforms.

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andrewstuart
There was a bookshop around the corner which had a lady sitting in the corner
and tens of thousands of second hand books everywhere, on shelves, in piles,
room after room of these books.

I wondered if there was a way to sell them online.

I thought maybe it would be possible to photograph a bookshelf, and some sort
of program could identify each book from its spine and find its ISBN and
automatically list it for sale online.

Then if it sold, it would be referenced back to the photo so it could be
easily found even without an indexing system.

I still wonder if the current tech is good enough to do that.

Sadly the shop closed recently and its all gone.

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runemadsen
This type of site has excited for almost 15 years in Denmark
(antikvariat.net). It's a shared archive and purchasing platform for all used
book sellers, and it has proven to work exceptionally well.

~~~
madhadron
Used bookshops have been on abebooks.com for years in the USA. This is new
booksellers.

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passthejoe
The site is not that great, and there are a lot of what look like shoddy
print-on-demand books that Amazon also sells. Not exactly your indie-bookstore
mix.

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bookshelf11
If the website is run as poorly as that article is written I don't have high
hopes. They wait until the 10th paragraph to tell you how the hell it works!

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WorldMaker
How does it differ from previous IndieBound efforts?

~~~
dhosek
The indiebound site now directs people to bookshop.org for purchases.
Previously, it would direct you to an individual bookseller's website which
may or may not have had online ordering available.

Update: The changeover to bookstore.org has been postponed to June 1st to
direct as much traffic to individual bookstores' websites as possible.

~~~
_delirium
I can see why they went this way, but this change does seem to be in one sense
admitting defeat vs. the Amazon model. The new Bookshop model _is_ basically
the Amazon model as far as sales and fulfillment goes: centralized online
ordering, with centralized fulfillment from warehouses directly to consumers,
bypassing retail. The main difference from Amazon is that they hope to sell at
higher prices, producing a surplus from the online sales business that can be
distributed to indie bookstores, which they can use to cross-subsidize their
brick-and-mortar business. But unlike the previous Indiebound model, the indie
bookstores involved in Bookshop no longer actually touch the books at any
point in the sales/fulfillment process.

~~~
WorldMaker
Sounds like it is a lot more like what AbeBooks used to be then. (Before
Amazon bought and gutted AbeBooks.)

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balladeer
I don't seem to any benefit here. In fact it takes away from the experience of
going to a bookstore and everything related to it; at a higher cost and with a
delayed delivery. Besides is this site a non profit? For all I know they might
get acquired and then we all will get to see that last email.

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paraschopra
Check out saveyourbookstore.com - my wife built it to help indie bookstores
survive during the lockdown.

~~~
xrd
This is a cool site, and I like the clever way it "works" on my desktop.

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musicale
> Thanks to Bookshop, There Is No Reason* to Buy Books on Amazon Anymore

*other than (but not limited to) the following: larger inventory, lower prices, faster/cheaper shipping, kindle, prime video, amazon smile, etc.

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WalterBright
I've bought lots (figuratively and literally) of books from ebay.

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steveharman
"Support local bookstores, shop online with Bookshop"

In North America only?

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maskboy
does anyone know of an existing alternative to goodreads?

