Have we reached the tipping point?
Could this finally be the viable independent alternative to Amazon?
Have we accepted the reality that cheap and fast does not equal healthy and does little to foster community sustainability?
A tall order for sure but the timing might be a bit better than past efforts to compete against the Godzilla of bookselling.
Enter Bookshop.org:
Bookshop is an online bookstore with a mission to financially support independent bookstores and give back to the book community.
We believe that bookstores are essential to a healthy culture of readers and writers. They’re where authors can connect with readers, where we discover new writers, where children get hooked on the thrill of reading that can last a lifetime. They’re also anchors for our downtowns and communities.
As more people buy their books online, we wanted to create an easy, convenient way to get your books and still support local bookstores. We also wanted to create a place where authors, groups, individuals, and publications can earn affiliate fees that benefit local bookstores.
We hope that Bookshop can help strengthen the fragile ecosystem and margins around bookselling and keep local bookstores an integral part of our culture and communities.
Hard to argue with that.
10% of all sales on Bookshop.org will be evenly divided and distributed to independent bookstores and every receipt will inform customers about the bookstores near them, and include event listings for those stores.
For booksellers that mostly live in the non-new book world Bookshop.org offers a great way to curate lists of in-print books that complement one’s area of interest. Bookshop.org offers a healthy 25% affiliate commission on sales generated from your lists.
To celebrate this noble effort Book Patrol will curate a list of recent in-print Books about Books and will link to Bookshop.org for books we feature.
Fingers crossed.
Previously on Book Patrol:
A Tale of Two Cities: Amazon opens a bookstore while Indiebound adds a ‘Buy Now’ button