Bibliophiles don’t need to commit to one style of reading – with myriad titles available digitally or as audiobooks, diversifying reading habits has never been easier.
However, as platforms vary, the seller often doesn’t. Amazon accounts for more than 80% of all online book sales, according to market research firm IBISWorld. Not to mention it owns Kindle, a wildly popular format for e-reading.
Bookshop.org is ready to change that. Today, the online platform that connects readers to local bookstores launched an e-reading platform of its own. For the first time, local independent bookstores can sell e-books to customers, says CEO and founder Andy Hunter.
Bookshop.org launches e-book platform to support local bookstores
Hunter is in the business of solving logistical problems for readers. In 2020, he launched Bookshop.org to support local businesses losing sales to Amazon Books. Years later, as an e-reader himself, he realized how hard it was to continue his “socially-conscious consumerism” mindset of buying locally when it came to digital titles.
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“Right now, no matter how much you love your local bookstore, if you want to read an e-book, you have to go to Amazon or another alternate platform and you can’t support your local bookstore,” Hunter tells USA TODAY. “E-books are an important revenue stream for publishers and authors and they could be for independent bookstores.”
The result is an app (available for iOS and Android, and accessible from a web browser) with nearly a million titles from major publishing houses. Readers can annotate, add notes, look up words and sync across all their devices. There’s a search function if consumers know the book they want to read, and if they don’t, there’s an explore page with suggestions by genre.
Most importantly for Hunter, booksellers will take home the profits, which he says has prevented local businesses from thriving in e-book sales until now.
“There’s no real way to make it profitable, but we don’t care about it being profitable,” Hunter says, citing the socially conscious company’s B corporation status. “Our mission is to help independent bookstores survive and thrive in the digital age.”
With discounts, quick shipping and Kindle synching, Amazon Books has long been an appealing option to many readers. But now, Hunter says there’s “no reason on Earth to give a billionaire your $9.99 for your e-book,” as publishers set a fixed price for e-books and there’s no shipping to compete with.
Bookshop.org’s new initiative follows a growing movement across social media – not just exclusively in bookish communities – to forgo Amazon and other big-box sellers in favor of shopping locally.
“In an age of billionaires and giant e-commerce companies and our loss of control of our lives to Silicon Valley oligarchs, that they know we’re going to fight back against that and we’re going to stay local,” Hunter says. “It doesn’t have to be this way. We can invest in, we can support our local community even when we’re reading digital books.”
E-reader features to include social sharing
Bookshop.org’s platform also includes a “quote-sharing” feature for social media, Hunter says. He wants books to catch up to the way other media is shared – it’s easy to share your Spotify or Apple Music listening to your Instagram story, and you can even post about your workouts with some apps. But if you want to share a quote from a book, readers have to take a photo of the physical book or a screenshot.
What Hunter instead envisions is a more seamless process for sharing a passage that includes a link to the digital version of the book. BookTok showed what can happen when books go viral – what if local bookstores benefit in the process?
“They should be able to share that to social media and somebody else should be able to click in, buy the book using Apple Pay and start reading it right away,” Hunter says. “That’ll fuel all kinds of discussions about books on TikTok and places like that, and all of that will benefit the independent bookstores because it will be them selling the books that people are talking about.”
Looking for your next great read? USA TODAY has you covered.
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Clare Mulroy is USA TODAY’s Books Reporter, where she covers buzzy releases, chats with authors and dives into the culture of reading. Find her on Instagram, check out her recent articles or tell her what you’re reading at cmulroy@usatoday.com.
