Balancing the Books — how innovation in book retailing is challenging the dominance model of business

Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash

It’s 2018, pre-pandemic. A time when Amazon are dominating the book retail market in the UK, their sheer enormity granting them incredible buying power and leverage. With over 50% of customers buying their books online instead of in store, the small independent bookshop is struggling to keep afloat, its main appeal being able to provide the quaint joy of browsing beautiful books.

Then 2020 and the covid pandemic brings even this small pleasure to an abrupt halt. The only option, if you want to buy a book to keep you occupied for those long months, is to shop online. The small independent bookshop, with its limited resources and often minimal e-commerce capability, is struggling even more to compete with the behemoth that is Amazon.

The outlook was bleak and some didn’t survive. But on the other side of the Atlantic a glimmer of hope was emerging in the form of Bookshop.org.

First launched in the US in early 2020, the idea came to founder Andy Hunter in 2018 when he heard a question raised at an American book industry dinner: “what if e-commerce was seen as a boon for independent bookstores instead of being their existential threat?”

Hunter then embarked on discussions with the American Booksellers Association (ABA), sought financial backing and engaged support from a selection of independent bookshops to realise his idea. Following its success in the US, the UK launch was brought forward to catch the Christmas market in November 2020 and an incredible £1m was raised for independent bookshops in the first four months.

So how does it work?

Bookshop.org is an ecommerce platform that any independent bricks and mortar bookshop can set up their online shop on. It is a very quick and easy process and is free to join. Customers using the site can then select the local bookshop that they want to support and every sale made through the online shop means 30% of the retail price for the bookshop.

The bookshop can curate its own recommended reading lists to tempt people to their online shop and they have access to any book that is in stock at Bookshop.org’s wholesaler, not just their own shop stock. The fulfilment is then carried out by the wholesaler.

When no local bookshop is selected, Bookshop.org puts 10% of the retail price into a pool that is shared amongst all the bookshops on its site and pays this out twice a year. As an individual you can also set yourself up as an affiliate on the site and earn yourself 10% of the retail price if a book purchase is made through your page.

Bookshop.org has provided independent bookshops with a much improved online presence and whilst its own marketing budget is high, by leveraging the 50,000+ affiliates in addition to the booksellers in physical bookshops to generate word of mouth publicity and push online sales through its site, customers not wishing to fund Bezos’s latest planetary exploration have a real alternative. The rising tide has lifted all boats and the momentum is good for all bookshops: Bookshop.org recently announced that over £3m has been raised for bookshops in the UK.

To ensure good governance, their articles of incorporation state that Bookshop.org cannot be sold to Amazon or any other major US retailer. The owners, which includes the ABA, are in this for the love of bookshops, not for a big return on investment. The board comprises seven directors, three of whom must represent independent bookshops and it also has an advisory board of 19 independent booksellers. It was in the top 5% of all BCorps across the globe for Best for the World Governance in 2022.

As for the customers, who receive a 7% discount off the retail price, it seems they are happy too. With 4.9/5 stars on Trustpilot and over 17,000 reviews, it is the highest rated online book shop globally for customer service.

And what for the future? Having just completed an angel fundraising round Bookshop.org will soon be adding audiobooks and eBooks to its platform. They are hoping to establish more flexible fulfilment options and provide shops with the ability to sell online all the products they may stock, not just books.

We’re always interested in how other businesses are putting purpose into practice, are you? Contact us at otherkind.

Article by Julie Hudson, for Otherkind Ltd.