Independent bookstores can now get an electronic book market. Today, Bookshop.org announced the addition of electronic books to his web site. As with physical books, the online store invites customers to appoint a local bookstore at the checkout, and then sends part of the purchased price to this store. Since he began to sell physical volumes in 2020, Bookshop.org sent books to Indie seller in the direction of more than 35 million dollars.
During the recent chat, the general director of Andy Hunter told me that hundreds of stores were credited to Bookshop.org their ability to stay in business through the remains caused by pandemia. Now, thanks to additional sales of electronic books, these stores will have another income stream – and buyers will have another way to support the neighborhood stores. “This is not a good business strategy to say:“ Come to us for your books, but when you need an e -book, go to Amazon, ”he said.
The site will offer more than three million e -books from each major publisher, and all profit from the sale will go to the selected customer store. If the user does not assign the store, it will partially send profit to the pool for all participating bookstores, and the rest will return to Bookshop.org. The company will also make money on advertising publishers on its web site. Since the prices for electronic books are set by the publisher, the names will cost the same way as from Amazon, Kobo, Google Books or in another place.
In addition to the new category, Bookshop.org also presents a new application for Reader for iOS and Android devices. Through the application, readers can explore the curatorial lists of books, look for electronic books in the catalog, read preliminary viewing and add books to their list of desires. You still need to go to Bookshop.org in the browser to make purchases – just as you make with other sellers of electronic books so that they can avoid Apple And Google Cool commissions in the application. (Nevertheless, on the Tangental Note, the website Bookshop.org is now taking Google and Apple Pay.)
Reading books in the application should feel familiar to everyone who used an application for a tablet or smartphone, offering the main points, annotations, type and font settings and text searches. In addition to immersed pages, you can also install the text in a vertical endless scroll mode, an option that I have not seen in other EREADER applications.
Probably the most intriguing function is the exchange of citation. When I talked with Hunter, he noted that when people share quotes from books on social networks, this often happens with the help of a printed quote along with a picture photographed by a physical page or cover of the book. If you want to read this book, you will have to work a little to find it and buy it.
Thanks to the exchange of quote in the Bookshop.org application or the browser reader, up to 300 characters of the text can be distinguished and exchanged for Facebook, X, Threads, Bluesky or somewhere else, you can share regular Weblinks. The generated link creates a formatted post with a quote, as well as the image of the book cover. Anyone who presses the link will be delivered to a web page with a quote in context, above the button to buy a book. Hunter says that the goal is that “talking about books is felt as a native part of the social network.”
Like someone, who is invested in EridersI asked if there will be Bookshop.org e -books for readers or kobos. Hunter told me that his company is already working on compatibility with KOBO devices, and is also negotiating with Amazon to potentially allow Kindles to display the names purchased at Bookshop.org. Integration with Cobo can come this year; Amazon cooperation will probably take more time.
Another upcoming function allows Indie seller to sell e -books directly from their own website of the bookstore using Bookshop.org technology. This partnership will not be available when starting, but it should be on the air in the spring of 2025.
Hunter told me the story from the initial phase of investors with iteration only for printing a book. When potential investors learned that he could not defeat Amazon at a price or speed, he laughed from the room. They suggested that no one would want to pay more or longer to wait for the book, no matter how worthy they thought that independent bookstores could be.
After more than five years, these investors turned out to be not only the wrong, the company's existence suggests that at least some people can save several additional dollars and some patience to support bookstores, now, BOOKSHOP.org may really correspond to Amazon At both price and speed, since even the largest electronic video cannot discount electronic books, and delivery instantly, regardless of where you buy.