For readers who are distressed by the double impact that online book malls and ebooks have on traditional bookshops, Bookshop.org has been offering since 2020 an alternative to Amazon and other online stores that supports local bookstores. Now, however, Bookshop.org is rolling out ebooks in the UK to challenge the Bezos Behemoth.
The website provides a map of partnering independent bookstores. Readers select their local or preferred recipient – like Cheshire’s Curious Cat bookshop, illustrated here – and thereafter, every ebook they buy through Bookshop.org delivers a donation to that bookstore. The company claims that “we’ve raised more than $40 million for independent bookstores.” As of February 2023, 70% of American Booksellers Association members were affiliated with Bookshop.org.
Bookshop.org is a certified B Corporation, with validated social and environmental impact. After the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it was able to offer a revenue stream for independent bookstores when in-person shopping was difficult to impossible.
Bookshop.org still is required to implement DRM for those publishers that require it. For its own app, it uses Readium DRM. The app is a respectable generic ebook reading app comparable to many other popular equivalents.
Bookshop.org isn’t able to offer purchases through the app; these still have to be made on the website, thanks to Google and Apple’s commissions on in-app purchases. This may change in the UK at some point soon, but regrettably, Bookshop.org in itself isn’t likely to be able to shift their stance on this front, or of publishers regarding DRM. At least it also offers a slew of DRM-free titles, which users can transfer to the device and app of their choice. And buying new ebooks is simply a question of clicking through the app to your browser on your mobile device.
“We have over 1 million titles available in the UK,” Bookshop.org’s representative told Teleread. “We will continue to expand the catalogue across a range of larger publishers through to self-published authors.” In the UK, Bookshop.org handles physical inventory through its wholesale partner Gardners, and ebook inventory via Bookwire and Coresource, with potential future cooperation with Draft2Digital.
There’s no sign yet, at least, of a partner or own-brand ereading device for Bookshop.org. Given the wide range and choice of cheap tablets nowadays, though, that may be no bad thing.
A collaboration with Waterstones, the UK’s leading high street book chain, would be an interesting development. Waterstones has not had an ebook business since 2016. However, Waterstones could hardly be classed as an independent bookseller. It has been passed from one private investment fund to another since 1998, and is currently owned by Elliott Investment Management. Waterstones stores hardly need Bookshop.org contributions – but competing small bookshops certainly do.
