'Bookshop', which allows local bookstores to receive margins even when buying books online, begins handling e-books by defeating Amazon
Bookshop.org's ebook store is a local-first competitor to Amazon and Kindle | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/tech/597137/bookshop-org-ebooks
Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter is expanding his Amazon fight to ebooks | The Verge
https://www.theverge.com/decoder-podcast-with-nilay-patel/605013/bookshop-org-andy-hunter-amazon-ebooks-monopoly-books
In the United States, as unlimited e-book reading services such as Amazon Kindle Unlimited, which cost about 1,000 yen per month , became popular, many bookstores were forced to close, but on the other hand, it was reported that independent bookstores that also function as communities were making a comeback around 2017. Following this trend, Hunter launched 'Bookshop,' a service that allows independent bookstores to launch their own online shops in January 2020. When a book is purchased at Bookshop, the bookstore can earn 30% of the same price as the purchase at the bookstore as a profit, so it has become popular because it leads to supporting local independent bookstores while purchasing books online, and from March to November 2020, daily sales have increased from $50,000 (about 7.7 million yen) to $7.5 million (about 1.1 billion yen).
What is 'Bookshop', an independent online bookstore service that grew its daily sales from 5 million yen to 780 million yen in less than a year? - GIGAZINE
Bookshop has also started selling e-books since January 2025. E-books purchased on Bookshop can be read on a browser, and the iOS or Android app allows you to enjoy a reading experience that includes fine adjustments such as bookmarking, highlighting, and adjusting fonts.
When you purchase an e-book from Bookshop, just like when you purchase a paper book, profits go to the book's copyright holder as well as to the local bookstore you selected. Whether you find and purchase an e-book from a store created by the bookstore, or purchase from a general list or recommendations, once you have selected it as an 'affiliated bookstore,' the bookstore you want to support will receive profits.
Hunter appeared on The Verge podcast, an American technology media outlet, and was interviewed about Bookshop's entry into the e-book market.
Nilay Patel, host of The Verge podcast:
How many staff does the Bookshop have and how is it organised?
Mr. Hunter:
We have about 40 employees. We have sales, marketing, development, operations and customer service teams. By staying as lean as possible, we can keep revenue per employee high and achieve our mission of putting profits back into local bookstores.
Mr. Patel:
Why did I get into e-books? Why did I decide to get into yet another battle to sell a product where Amazon basically has a monopoly on the market?
Mr. Hunter:
One in six books sold in the United States is an e-book, but you can't buy e-books at your local bookstore. Since e-books account for about 15-20% of the market, local bookstores should participate in that. Also, even if you want to support your local bookstore, I think it's strange that you can't contribute to the bookstore if you want to use e-books. In other words, one of our goals is to remove corporate control from e-books.
If a big retailer decides how ebooks are sold, which ebooks are marketed, which ebooks are available to readers, how the commerce works, how authors are promoted, and if that retailer is only interested in its own profits, that's not good for the culture around books as a whole. It's not good for authors, it's not good for readers, it's not good for publishers. So we need to diversify the ebook landscape, and at the same time, we need to give people who want to support local bookstores a way to buy ebooks and support their local bookstores at the same time.
Mr. Patel:
Amazon's e-book model works because Amazon develops its Kindle devices at zero or even a loss, and users who get their Kindle devices buy a lot of books only from Amazon in a closed ecosystem. Many people tend to prefer reading hardware like Kindle and Kobo, but do you plan to sell cheaper hardware on Bookshop?
Mr. Hunter:
The Bookshop team is small, with seven engineers, two of whom are contractors. Just getting the app and e-book library up and running is a lot of work, so if we go in the direction of hardware, we'll start with an indie alternative to Kindle that allows you to support local bookstores through crowdfunding. We haven't decided yet whether we'll try that, but we'll decide in 2025. First, we're working to partner with existing e-book devices and readers to give them more flexibility to read e-books purchased at local bookstores on a variety of devices. Unfortunately, I've been badmouthing Amazon for the past five years, so politely asking them will likely not work. But we'll start by politely asking them, and aim to make books purchased on Bookshop available to read on Kindle devices. If Amazon refuses, it could be an antitrust violation, as it would mean that only books purchased from the company could be read on devices that make up 85% of e-book readers.
According to Hunter, Bookshop has contracts with all five major American publishers (PRH, S&S, Holtzbrinck/Macmillan, Hachette, and HarperCollins), as well as most of the major indie publishers, and more titles are planned to be added in the future. Hunter said, 'It's Amazon's fault that e-books aren't good, popular, or profitable for bookstores. Amazon is the dominant force with 75% of the e-book market share, but Amazon's importance has become so great that e-book innovation has died. It's time for change. If you have a community of e-book users and writers who can engage with readers, you can start innovating. And the first step in innovation is to take e-books out of the walled garden.'
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