Bookshop.org just launched, US-only initially, with 3 million titles; they pay affiliates 30% commission, whereas Amazon apparently pays Kindle affiliates 5-10% commission (+ bounties for SM campaigns, which is getting annoyingly overdone).
Yes they should add a filter for DRM-free, or allow setting it as your default.
From TheVerge article: *"The app... has a unique social feature: “We’ll allow anybody to share any quote from any ebook to social media, and then people who are on social can click through, buy the ebook, and start reading it on their phone immediately.”"
Ok. I misrecollected the articles by TheVerge + others said: "Bookshop’s deal is the same for ebooks and physical books — the store gets 30 percent of the list price." (and doesn't mention affiliates but other articles do)
Suggest you should drop your comment on that article, it's potentially misleading.
The Verge article was incomplete and misleading because it says nothing about affiliates (doesn't even mention the word) and says the bookstore always gets all the profit from any referral.
And in fact it says "The Bookshop model is a simple one: when you use the website, you pick a store you’d like to support, and when you buy a book that store gets all the profit... For bookstores, the deal is exactly the same: you choose your store, the store can share recommendations and lists, and it gets the money every time you buy something. " Even if the link you followed came from a social media affiliate, not directly from the bookshop? Very unclear.
I quoted from a second article (can't find the link now) which actually states the commissions. (So if a bookstore make a sales from a link that came in via an affiliate, does the affiliate get 10% plus the bookstore gets 30%?)
> The Verge article was incomplete and misleading because it says nothing about affiliates (doesn't even mention the word) and says the bookstore always gets all the profit from any referral.
It also doesn’t mention whether they take UnionPay or how easy it is to park outside their office, so yeah, if it’s trying to be a compendium of human knowledge related to the website Bookshop.org, I guess it is pretty incomplete. Possible that it isn’t, though.
Affiliate links are to Bookshop’s main site, not one of their cobranded bookstore storefronts. When you buy from the main site, the affiliate who linked you there gets 10% and bookstores and Bookshop split the rest, as they always do. When you buy from a bookstore storefront, the store gets 30% directly. As far as I can tell, there are no affiliate links to bookstore storefronts, so your question isn’t applicable.
Don't be abrasive. It neglects mentioning the commission structure which other recent articles do mention, and actually is important - Amazon is currently pushing affiliate commission on e-books a lot, YT is awash with spammy ads for orgs selling "become a lifestyle e-publisher"; yet I've still never seen a single ad or even non-ad promotion anywhere online for Bookshop.org - even though I've been asked my (disappearing) local indie brick-and-mortar stores since before 2020 when they were going to get it together to challenge the incumbent. As much as we want Bookshop.org to succeed, they'll have to start articulating to the general public a) that they exist, and b) the reasons for choosing them then c) making it easy to buy from them. Years before Covid I asked my bookstores if they were ever going to get around to an integrated gift card, and they missed the boat on that in 2020.
> Affiliate links are to Bookshop’s main site, not one of their cobranded bookstore storefronts... As far as I can tell, there are no affiliate links to bookstore storefronts, so your question isn’t applicable.
So, seems to mean the app's supposed big feature promoted above allowing "sharing any quote to SM as an affiliate link" cannot go to a cobranded indie bookstore? Then I can't see the indie bookstores themselves wanting to use it much.
As I say this last week's news was the main indie bookstore chain in the SF Bay Area with 11 locations filed for bankruptcy and closed its Berkeley location, but the other 10 remain open. [https://booksinc.net/our-statement-regarding-filing-voluntar...]
Anyway I hope they do well but they have a battle to fight.
Affiliates = websites/apps trying to help readers/authors in different ways while trying to make enough to pay for infrastructure / time-to-build.
For example, I run Shepherd.com, and I try to help readers find books they don't know about in fun ways while helping new authors get their first readers.
Or book websites that try to create questions for book clubs to use when discussing books.
Fun fact: The real affiliate rate is only half what they publish, as the sales get scrubbed due to the chaotic nature of cookies/affiliate tracking. So Amazon pays around 2% for book sales, and bookshop.org pays 5% (if not less at Amazon since they only compensate you if the sale happens in the first 24 hours). This is why it is impossible for any book websites to fund themselves without direct funding from readers/authors at this point.
Thanks, it has been fun to build, and got some really cool stuff coming this year :)!
We are working now on a massive upgrade for the bookshelves so we can better highlight the best books of all-time (plus by decade so you can dig into 1950s or 1990s sci-fi etc), new books, trending books, and some other cool stuff!
Affilate link fraud? No idea. Maybe they should be flattered if scammers think they have enough affiliate revenue to even make affiliate fraud worthwhile.
We have something similar in Central Europe, covering Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Benelux and Italy for many years now. The tolino https://mytolino.com/ works similar that bookstores get a cut of the sales.
The price was irrelevant, it was just to illustrate that we can send linklove to Bookshop.org instead of Amazon. Instead of complaining about the choice, why not post a better link to a book at Bookshop.org? e.g.
> One way we can boost Bookshop.org is anytime we cite a book to use their URL instead of Amazon's URL.
There have been various efforts in the past to avoid citing Amazon that way. I thought it was a good idea, but I ran into an odd problem - publishers tend not to have pages for their books at all.
Ok then email both Bookshop.org + the publisher citing the specific book. If they now have a bigger agreement that should not happen (for new books). For old/ second-hand, sure.
This is great news, but the lack of a filter for DRM-free—coupled with the inability to send any other types of titles to an e-reader—makes this pretty useless for a lot of us. An e-ink display really does make all the difference for me to be willing to read e-books.
Hopefully they improve the filters with time and it's not an intentional decision to appease publishers.
I recently discovered and have been enjoying libro.fm for audio books. Can anyone here recommend a good source of DRM-free e-books?
At the moment there is no way to download books neither from app nor website and not all ereaders support the installation of the app. I only found out about this by listening to a podcast the CEO recently did. Bookshop also wont refund ebook sales.
I have a Boox page. It's quirky, but I love that it has the normal Google play store and a great battery life.
Now I can use whatever app suits me, and I can buy my ebooks from whatever store has the best deal. Sometimes I'll find Kobo is cheaper than Kindle, for example.
Often I read older fiction that's out of copyright, I use the Moon+ Reader app on the Boox and it's as good as the Kindle except free.
No, Kobo and Pocketbook run Linux. Most of the Sony models too. Some Android readers like Tolino and Nook don't allow installing apps without jailbreaking.
ebooks.com will tell you whether a title has DRM or not. I've switched all my non-DRM buys to them. Unfortunately publishers dictate whether or not something will have DRM so the vast majority of books are DRM'd.
I would need a couple of things to make this workable for me:
- an e-reader implementation/support on an e-ink device --- looks like the Android app on a Boox or something similar would cover that
- regular sales --- the $1.99 offerings which Amazon and most other e-book vendors offer have thus far pretty much kept abreast or ahead of my reading inclinations (even filtering for where they intersect with my interests)
- a robust organization/filtering where _all_ versions of a given text show up under a single listing/page (there are a couple of books where I have multiple copies because it was re-published with a new foreword and the old listing vanished and there was _no_ indication that I already owned it --- similarly, this should include _all_ public domain work, and including the entirety of Project Gutenberg (preferably not for free, but for some nominal amount which is then donated to that project) would make usage a _lot_ easier
- a way to buy gift cards using Microsoft Rewards points (or cash) --- remember the sales I mentioned, I never spend more than discretionary money on e-books
- a mechanism for reporting typos/conversion errors which actually works --- the first e-book I "bought", Robert Heinlein's _Space Cadet_ was so rife with errors that it was unreadable --- I actually had to check a copy out from a local library so as to be able to write up a list of all the typos --- even now, I still find typos in books (_Dune_, which I didn't buy/re-read on my Kindle still had typos in it ("pogrom" rendered as "program", a formatting error for one of the _s_ glossary entries, a couple of others) despite having had millions of downloads before I got around to reading it.
I would also like to have an ebook format where more effort is given to annotation/decoration, and where that would re-flow based on screen size (cue the discussion I tried to have with my boss where I wanted to make an e-book app and matching format back when the iPhone first launched...)
I’ve been waiting for this for so long. I love bookstores and want them to exist but really prefer to read books on an ereader because they don’t take up space and it’s easier for me to read at night. Right now my solution is to buy Kindle books and then make yearly donations to my favorite bookstores (if they accept them) and buy gifts at the bookstore. But that’s not realistic as a plan.
This is so close to perfect. Right now to read these I’d need to get an ereader that runs full Android (BOOX, etc) which isn’t what I want. But they say they’re working on a partnership with Kobo, so I’ll wait for that and then finally ditch my Kindle.
Amazon is killing "download and transfer to kindle by USB" in 9 days (on 24th of February, 2025 - that's 2/24/25 for Americans), so you might want to hurry if you want to read your Amazon titles on other readers.
Even that option only allowed one by one downloading from the web, with 3 clicks per download.
Instead I sent my 400 books over the air to my Kindle (you can do this in bulk) then connected the Kindle over USB and had Calibre pull the books off for me. Much easier
Good to hear there's a Kobo partnership in the works. I was so excited when I saw this announcement, only to find it was exclusively through an app. Reading books on a phone or tablet is honestly my least favorite reading method.
I've always loved that Humble Bundle books are usually either Kobo licenses or drm-free formats that can be side loaded.
I see they are committing the same fraud as Amazon, in that most of the titles are encumbered with digital restrictions management, but the button to 'purchase' says "buy" instead of "lease".
> The publishers of our ebooks require that the ebooks you “purchase” from Bookshop.org are only licensed to you. Even DRM-free books are subject to some restrictions and may not be owned outright. However, even in the case of an ebook being removed from Bookshop.org by the publisher, users who purchased the ebook previously will continue to have access to the ebook file. Depending on the circumstances, in the unlikely event an ebook is removed from your library because of a rights issue or otherwise, Bookshop.org will refund the purchase price you paid.
What problem is this solving for me as a reader? Between Apple Books and Kindle, I’m not sure why I should care. The idea of supporting local bookshops sounds nice in theory, but just as digital photos killed the photo processing business, the romanticized idea of the local bookstore will become obsolete — aside from the cool antiquarian and used book stores.
As far as recommendations, my local bookstores are often staffed by people that don’t have much in common with my interests. Much easier to find relevant book recommendations online.
It isn't just about the books or authors, just as a cafe isn't just about the bean-growers. Bookshops are social hubs. They give you a chance to browse and see what else is available in the area you are searching and often, not even in the area you are searching. For me, a good bookshop makes an area worthwhile to visit and hang out.
It is almost always the case that a brick and mortar bookstore is a labor of love, in the face of crushing competition from Amazon. For the stores I frequent, the physical store is still the reason they get up every morning.
If online sales is what it takes to make some money and to keep themselves in the news, so be it.
> the romanticized idea of the local bookstore will become obsolete
actually local bookstores are making somewhat of a comeback as people understand their value (there have been multiple articles on this though I can't find them right now)
I was an early adopter of Kindle and used to buy digital books from Amazon (or get them from IRC, mostly out of print technical books), and used Apple Books too. But for the past 5 years or so, I only buy books from my local bookstore (preferably used, but sometimes new), except that I do sometimes buy used books from ThriftBooks.com. I found that I much prefer reading a physical book, and it feels good to be supporting the local economy in some small way rather than giving more money to Bezos and Co. After all, I benefit from a stronger local economy whereas I don't benefit from Amazon becoming ever larger.
> As far as recommendations, my local bookstores are often staffed by people that don’t have much in common with my interests. Much easier to find relevant book recommendations online.
Then you haven't found the right bookstore. Many, if not most, independent bookstores specialize in particular areas. In those cases, the staff's knowledge of a product can be invaluable. Certainly better than online recommendations since you can talk to them about what you are looking for, rather than accepting random reviews or machine generated recommendations at face value. If they don't specialize in a particular topic, then any recommendation they can provide is not going to be any better than what you will get from a major retailer or website.
This is always interesting to me, the random vitality of knowledge here. What was it that made that other post flop? I mean it was pretty much the same group of people here, so it is not the knowledge of this that really triggered this to be on the front page, so what does the HN community really value then?
My long-standing question is why the holy hell is there no dupe checker? It's not that I care about some rando having their submission get 1600 points 3 hours after an identical one. It's often the problem of a medium-level discussion happening on a submission, then the later submission really catches fire and the first audience has no idea unless the second happens to make the front page. The second audience rehashes the talking points already covered by the first audience, and only dang can do an update to merge them together if someone cares enough to email them. So much manual curation for a site about using technology to solve problems
Time of the day, day of the week. Other topics that are popular at the time. There’s a lot of factors and it’s not always the quality of the submission. That’s why the second chance pool exists.
Please forgive my cynicism, but this strikes me as coming straight out of the, "we're building a tech company for social change," handbook. The handbook which tries to lure people in with a promise, where their intent is to build their own corporate empire and to give everyone else the short stick in the end.
Don't get me wrong. If they were up there saying they were doing it for publishers or authors, I may find some integrity in their claim. After all, they are the ones hurting from Amazon's dominance, they are the ones who would benefit by bringing their products to consumers via other channels, and they are the ones bringing something to the table.
But independent bookstores? Don't get me wrong, I want to see them thrive. Yet it doesn't look like they are bringing much to the table here. Once you get past the landing page with books they (likely) curated for their intended market, there isn't much of a reason for them to exist in this particular marketplace. It doesn't much look like Bookshop.org facilitates them offering much unique to the particular bookstore's customers. For things like store events or community news or even a unique presentation of the store's products one would have to follow the links to the bookstore's social media pages or website.
While independent bookstores may benefit from an increased online presence in the short term, I'm left asking the question: what is preventing Bookshop.org from capturing their customers, decreasing commissions, and even blocking those links to the store's actual independent online presence in the medium to long term?
Maybe Bookshop.org's intent is genuine. The problem is that I've seen similar games being played out too many times before.
bookshop.org is basically a website for ingram distribution, the primary distribution company for indies. all the bookselling members get a commission for all sales on the platform, so it is very beneficial to the participating bookstores. bookshop.org exists separately from a lot of stores ecommerce website, though the bigger stores don't always participate in bookshop because they fear it will take away from their ecommerce sales. it's more aimed towards smaller stores who can't afford the time or money for a good ecommerce store, but also, i'm assuming trying to compete with amazon seo which would ultimately support indies since they split commissions from all the sales.
> While independent bookstores may benefit from an increased online presence in the short term, I'm left asking the question: what is preventing Bookshop.org from capturing their customers, decreasing commissions, and even blocking those links to the store's actual independent online presence in the medium to long term?
trust. it was started by somebody whose career demonstrated they are committed to supporting indies and literature. if you've been around booksellers, then you know how important this trust is. the booksellers are also very loud and opinionated so the company will know if they are making wrong decisions. the stores feel like they have somewhat of an ownership to bookshop (though not legally).
you might say, "well trust can be broken" and you're right but we're talking about a niche industry with a limited market size, and no potential for world domination/incentive to break the trust. i know it's crazy but some folks still do business like that. the platform's success depends on the relationship with the booksellers, so what happens when they break that trust?
before this, indies didn't have much helping them online except custom ecommerce stores that some stores can't afford and are generally not good software imo. bookshop.org is hardly competing with amazon here. there is no huge market capture they're after. they're just trying to help bookstores stay alive and compete.
source, i made ecommerce software for independent bookstores: https://bookhead.net
That all makes sense for physical products, it's just less clear what the local bookstore is actually adding to the process for a digital e-book transaction.
The local bookstore doesn’t add anything to this process.
But if bookshop.org doesn’t support the local bookstore then bookshop.org doesn’t have any value to the reader either. They’d might as well go to Amazon at that point.
when you are a bookseller on the sales floor, sometimes a customer asks for an e-book, and the bookseller won't be able to sell them an e-book copy. indies have never been able to sell this to their customers. now they can, indirectly, by telling them to buy it on bookshop and they'll get a cut.
There was nothing stopping bookshop.org from not sending any money from readers buying directly from their website to local bookstores for the past 5 years either.
So they have a track record.
But more importantly for the cynic, their CEO has publicly answered this question as well.
Basically, if they’re not sending money to local bookstores, there’s no reason for them to exist. There’s no reason for anyone to buy a book from them instead of Amazon if they stop fulfilling their purpose of supporting local bookstores.
When you buy. You can chose to put the profit to a specific local bookshop or into a group fund. Sounds like a great coop idea. Maybe the only thing to compete with heavily subsidized Amazon big corp.
It is sooo annoying to NOT be able to find any books online except for AMZ or the companies they bought up goodread.
Bookshop.org is also highly political. It used to be that bookstores would be politically neutral and feature content of all kinds. Now those stores often put political content the employees want to support on the main shelves. Bookshop is the online version of that, and instead of being a bookstore they were doing things like getting involved in the BLM movement. This isn’t in the spirit of true bookstores in my opinion.
Book stores have always put their own picks on the store shelves. Arguably it is one of the reasons for independent book stores to exist- the personal touch.
This wasn’t my experience until the 2010s. Before that, bookstores did not choose those picks to be obviously politically biased. I don’t think bookstores or libraries should be in the business of propagandizing customers.
> But now, Hunter says there’s “no reason on Earth to give a billionaire your $9.99 for your e-book,”
Except, many of the books I want to read are self-published by small authors, and are only available on Amazon, probably because of how easy it is to self-publish there.
I hope they can fix that, because it's my current biggest complaint about owning a Kobo reader.
> Except, many of the books I want to read are self-published by small authors, and are only available on Amazon, probably because of how easy it is to self-publish there.
I have that issue too. A lot of the books I read are on Kindle Unlimited, which requires exclusivity.
That is only because the authors chose the amazon exclusive option. From what I've read, this is declining in popularity anyway. If there are more good alternatives, self-publishing authors will change their preference.
Making an ePub is easy as pie - look into PanDoc for one trivial-to-use CLI application which can do the job using Word docs or Markdown as a source and emit ePub, PDF, and other ebook formats.
The idea that Amazon is essential to self-published ebooks is blatantly false, and is encouraged by Amazon to lock authors into the Kindle ecosystem.
1. Calibre can do the job for the case of mostly-text PDFs, while keeping images too of course. I haven't done this, but a quick search reveals that it can give inconsistent results (mostly depending on the source PDF of course).
2. If the "text" of the PDF is actually just an image, consider OCR instead, or treat it as a digital comic as I'll cover next:
3. For digital comics, a different program called CBConvert is what you want. I actually don't think ePubs are the best format for comics, and usually convert to CBZ format instead; CBConvert has this all covered.
I use Bookfinder.com on a regular basis to find DRM free dead tree books. It searches across all of the big new/used book vendors and also the smaller “thrift store / Goodwill” book dealers (even eBay buy now) Sorts in New and Used groupings then by price.
But like the software “Quality, Cost, Delivery” triangle, the delivery is 99% by USPS media mail, so it’s 5-7 business days to get the book.
It would be interesting to see Bookshop to hookup with Bookfinder to give them another search method.
The FAQ says no kindle reading, but an android and iOS app for now, and many (most?) books will be DRM restricted but doesn’t mention requiring online.
https://bookshop.org/info/ebooks#EBOOKFAQ
> Due to Amazon's proprietary digital rights management software (DRM) and publishers' DRM requirements, it’s not currently possible to buy ebooks from Bookshop.org or local bookstores and read them on your Kindle.
Eh it's very possible for DRM free ebooks with Calibre.
As long as they don’t use KFX (or whatever the name of the latest Kindle DRM is). There are some workarounds, but none of them are reliable and you often lose some of the typography improvements in KFX files.
This is an area where regulators should step in. DRM should either be banned on books (do we really want to lock up knowledge) or it should be standardized so that you can read any book on any device, like how you could play just about any DVD on any player. The current system gives Amazon too much power.
But we're not talking about getting books bought from Amazon off a Kindle here. We're talking about getting books bought from not-Amazon on a Kindle to read them.
Then you are often in an even worse spot. If you buy a book from Apple Books, there’s no way (as far I know) to remove the DRM. Same goes for books bought from other sellers that use Adobe’s OpenFile DRM (at least the current version of OpenFile).
Or were you not talking about DRM-encumbered books? I didn’t really consider those because very few are available commercially. Books from the publisher Tor is one notable example, but there aren’t many others.
This is my usual workflow. Find or buy the non-DRM epub version of a book, send it to <my_username>@kindle.com, click on the 'verify upload' email I get, and it then shows up on my Kindle ready to read. I do add the book to my Calibre library and have it send the email for me, but that's an extra step that isn't required. You could absolutely have a bookstore that could send the email for you when you buy the book, if they're willing to be DRM free.
You don't have to verify the upload if you whitelist your email address. Then it just goes straight through.
Also, the epub conversion worked for years before Amazon officially supported it! You just had to rename the .epub to .png and then it would convert it. Very weird, they probably had some kind of block on .epub .
I suppose a problem with that is that now Amazon knows what else you're reading.
Tbh the Calibre step doesn't mean much to me, since I can plug in the Kindle, stuff it with a few books and leave it there charging. Then when I feel like reading I have the books ready and full battery.
They do, but they probably do anyway since they control everything that is Kindle. If you don't want Amazon to know what you're reading, don't buy a kindle. And the good thing about it is that you do have the page sync. Even with uploaded files.
But yeah I'm looking to move to another ecosystem too. I'm not a big fan of calibre though, it's such a messy application. Very bad UX, so 2010s. I use it when I need it (conversion) but I wouldn't use it as my book library.
I'm looking for a new ereader ecosystem though. Ideally something where I can run the sync server myself. And readers with page turn buttons. I'm not really convinced of Kobo now that they only sell the colour Libra which has really poor contrast (so you always need the backlight). I really regret not buying a Libra 2 when they were still around.
Speaking of which, what are the alternatives to the Kindle?
I absolutely want the light because I read in bed a lot and I don't need a lamp on that way.
I don't care about any fancy functions besides reading epub. To be honest, I don't think I want any fancy functions. I only use the ereaders for reading fiction, if I'm going through a technical pdf I use a computer and either a separate text editor or paper for notes.
Built in stores don't count either, I'm not above going to guaranteed DRM free sources.
It seems many of them, at least, will be DRM'd. The big question IMO is what DRM they will use, as some is pretty easy to strip using Calibre whereas other DRM is more difficult or perhaps even (currently) impossible.
I’ve only used Bookshop.org a couple of times, but I have to say that I barely use Amazon anymore for actual books buying. I’ve used the ThriftBooks, Alibris, Biblio, Barnes & Noble, eBay, my own local bookstores. Book sales are completely commodified and Amazon is not really any more compelling except you might save on shipping.
> You can email the site owner to let them know you were blocked. Please include what you were doing when this page came up and the Cloudflare Ray ID found at the bottom of this page.
I guess a geo block? Wow! Either way I think I’ll pass.
So what are the guarantees that I keep the material I buy if they ever winddown and what is the timeframe for this. That how many years I have time to get DRM free version? At this point I won't buy digital material unless the platform is extremely established and have proven track record say like Steam or Amazon.
> The publishers of our ebooks require that the ebooks you “purchase” from Bookshop.org are only licensed to you. Even DRM-free books are subject to some restrictions and may not be owned outright. However, even in the case of an ebook being removed from Bookshop.org by the publisher, users who purchased the ebook previously will continue to have access to the ebook file. Depending on the circumstances, in the unlikely event an ebook is removed from your library because of a rights issue or otherwise, Bookshop.org will refund the purchase price you paid.
One way we can boost Bookshop.org is anytime we cite a book to use their URL instead of Amazon's URL. So here's "Nineteen Eighty Four" https://bookshop.org/p/books/nineteen-eighty-four-george-orw...
Yes they should add a filter for DRM-free, or allow setting it as your default.
From TheVerge article: *"The app... has a unique social feature: “We’ll allow anybody to share any quote from any ebook to social media, and then people who are on social can click through, buy the ebook, and start reading it on their phone immediately.”"