Bookshop.org celebrates one year of helping UK indie retailers
Bookshop.org, pitched as the ethical book buying alternative to Amazon, is celebrating the first anniversary since it launched in the UK.
It says that, during this time, customers buying through it have generated over £1.6 million for the 480 independent bookshops on the platform.
Born in the USA
Bookshop.org launched in the US during early 2020 and arrived in the UK in November of that year.
The venture is the brainchild of the writer and co-founder of Literary Hub, Andy Hunter.
It allows independent bookshops to create their own virtual shopfront on the site, with the stores receiving the full profit margin – 30% of the cover price – from each sale.
All customer service and shipping are handled by Bookshop and its distributor partners, with titles offered at a small discount and delivered within two to three days.
Bookshop is a B Corporation, created with the mission “to benefit the public good by contributing to the welfare of the independent literary community”. It therefore can’t be sold to a major US retailer, including Amazon.
The UK arm of the company is being run by Managing Director Nicole Vanderbilt, the former international VP at Etsy.
Vanderbilt says: “We are delighted by and incredibly grateful for the response we've had from readers, bookshops, affiliates and the wider publishing industry.”
“However, this is really only the beginning of what we believe we can do together to reshape the industry so that the indie bookshops get a greater share of the increasingly online book market.”
“We want to live in a world in which indie bookshops thrive – the bookshops that are community stalwarts, the owners who pour their heart and soul into making their high streets a better place, the booksellers who actually read and respond to books before confidently putting them into the hands of a reader.”
She adds: “We encourage readers to visit these bookshops as much as they possibly can, but when they can't, our role is to provide an easy, convenient, ethical way to buy books online while supporting these incredible bookshops.”
“Our message to readers: stop sending your money to space and start sending it to the independent bookshops we all love. There really is a better way to buy books online."
Jess Paul, manager of Max Minerva’s Marvellous Books in Bristol, used the shop’s commission to allay fears of their future during lockdown.
“We opened Max Minerva's in 2018, and in this time have seen high street retail undergo some huge changes. Brexit uncertainty, stock uncertainty, Covid closures and online selling were just some of the challenges we all faced,” he says.
“In April 2020, we weren't sure how we were going to get through the year and pay our bills. Bookshop.org couldn’t have arrived at a better time – with the commission from them, we have been able to pay all our bills, as well as offer our hard-working staff bonuses and raising wages.”
Meanwhile, Michèle Oldham, manager of Timber Books in Scotland, made some much needed changes to her bookshop: “We had been without a working boiler in the shop for four and a half years – meaning it often became bitterly cold here, especially in the winter.”
“We have finally had a new boiler installed and it has been entirely funded by our affiliation with Bookshop.org.”
