Bookshop.org is fantastic for sourcing physical books, but I would unfortunately heavily recommend against getting ebooks through it. The software of the company they partner with, "MyMustReads" is absolutely awful in my experience, and I've also not found a way yet to get the actual epub/mobi/etc files out of it and use them on my dedicated e-reader devices.
That’s unfortunate. The libraries I’ve lived near all have used OverDrive and Libby, both of which are great experiences (and it’s also relatively easy to get at the raw epubs).
This kind of reminds me of the retail co-op dynamic. Most people in the US are familiar with the Ace Hardware brand, where local stores get a branding and logistics boost from being part of the co-op, but stay entirely locally owned. That way, independent stores can function with the supply chain and purchasing power of a large multinational. IGA does a similar thing in the grocery space.
It doesn't seem like the actual local bookstore does much in this arrangement? They don't ship the book, own the customer relationship, or deal with customer support?
How does this work out well for them in the medium term? Won't they just be discarded after the customers have been acquired?
Does turning local bookstores into an affiliate really justify the rosy narrative in this article? Am I missing something?
Before I start, I will firstly say that anyone aiming to erode Amazon's monopoly is inherently a good thing, so Bookstore.org does seem to be a good thing, regardless of any questions I may have.
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The question I have though is this: what's the difference, in theory, between Bookstore.org and a CSR programme like Amazon Smile?
As far as I can see, Bookstore.org is selling books, from their own collection, from Ingram's warehouses. No curation nor customer service is handled by indie booksellers. The service is Bookstore.org's through and through. Then they're effectively "donating" 10% to indies (though it's not clear how much control the consumer has over the distribution of this).
They then have this additional affiliate programme, which is open to all, but has some special treatment for indie booksellers (no magical difference here from Amazon affiliates in terms of structure of approach).
They don't seem to recognise any actual distinguishing value in shopping in indie bookstores in their business model. What's to stop Bookstore.org just becoming the next Amazon (in a perfectly successful scenario) with this approach?
Is this just doing the same thing over again and expecting different results?
This is great if the inventory is there. I don't mind paying an extra couple dollars for a book; for me the reason I return time, and time again to Amazon is because I can reasonable expect to search for a book and have it ordered in less than five minutes.
I've been a fan for a very long time of getting to all of these sites through https://used.addall.com
It's a very good used book meta-search engine that sorts by price and condition, and includes specific notes from the merchant in the results page. I went through computer science/engineering in college using it, and one semester managed to get one-off editions of all of my books for less than $20 total.
Using it also ends up getting you acquainted with a lot of online used booksellers. It also includes Amazon, but you start to notice that a lot of the specific copies of books on Amazon are actually also being sold by the same sellers on friendlier or their own platforms, and when they're on Amazon they're often marked up to cover the Amazon tax.
Maybe its aimed at fiction, but I just looked for the last 5 books I purchased from amazon to see what increase I'd be looking at and they had none of them.
I dont understand why other online bookshops can't compete on price with Amazon. How hard can it be? Does Amazon have a huge cost advantage in deliveries now? I looked at bookshop.org but most books were not available or were $10-20 more expensive.
I dont need to support local bookshop because I never go to browse - way too many people there are sitting and reading full books.
Amazon does not need to make a profit off of books, for a variety of reasons. It can therefore sell them at a much narrower margin, or no margin, or even a loss.
Other booksellers generally don't have the many additional sources of funds that Amazon does. So if they compete with Amazon on price, they lose money and go out of business. And if they don't compete with Amazon on price, customers go to Amazon and the bookseller still goes out of business. Bit of a rock and a hard place for the booksellers.
Lots of good answers already - I would add that Amazon has people already signed up to prime, so they can ship the book ‘free’ unlike other bookshops. That’s a big advantage on price for a low cost item like a book.
I dont know the cost bookstores pay for books, but if bookshop.org is charging 30% of msrp i can't imagige the physical bookstore can make anywhere close to enough to warrant using that service.
FYI they also have an affiliate program. On my own affiliate site (which is basically a side project that I resurrect once a year) I give people the option to buy from various stores: https://bookworm.club/products/salt.html
We’ve been lucky to have our book on the front page of bookshop Uk for the launch. Bookshop is a great way to support your local book shops during lockdown - they need that now more than ever! They really are doing right by everyone.
If you’re interested, that’s our book there on the left (next to Obama!) - Gender Swapped Fairy Tales. I created an algorithm to swap the gender of any text and we applied it to all the most famous fairy tales - without rewriting anything. It’s then been really beautifully illustrated. It seems like such a simple change but that’s what makes it work - it really lays all the gender stereotypes bare. Some quite obvious but others are more subtle. You end up noticing a lot of stuff you didn’t with the gender the other way around. Interested in your thoughts if they read it!
I buy physical books like crazy. Unfortunately, I can similarly describe Amazon's book shipping practices.
Some of the things Amazon's done to the books I've ordered:
- shipped in a huge box without padding, so books bounce around inside the box, crushing their sides and corners
- shipped in mailing envelope, arriving bent
- shipped out of the warehouse with large rips in the cover and inner pages
Apparently way back when, Amazon was shipping books shrinkwrapped between two pieces of cardboard, which protects them. They certainly aren't taking that level of care now.
If there's a bookstore (marketplace) with decent inventory that actually takes care of the books they ship, I'd pay a premium.
It's important to have alternatives to Amazon and other big platforms. I'm happy to see someone build this innovative middleground between online and offline shopping and don't mind paying more for it.
In Brazil, Estante Virtual ("Virtual Bookshelf"), which unites secondhand bookstores, has been running since 2005. Albeit, it was bought out by a bigger concern last year.
bookshop.org is a fantastic initiative. One of the issues these smaller sites/services face is recall. News like this helps raise awareness, but it's difficult for people to remember and actually start using this habitually. We included bookshop.org prices in our browser plugin ( https://www.bbboookkksss.com/) so you can actually see the price (and buy) on bookshop, even if you happen to be browsing on amazon (which I imagine is the most common default)
I'm happy there's no monopoly in Poland in that case. The most popular bookshops here are Empik (the largest one), Matras and dozen of smaller, ebook-focused bookshops
