From CNN:
New bookselling platform Bookshop is pitching itself as a way for independent bookstores to claw back sales from Amazon, which controls a lion’s share of a market worth nearly $26 billion in the US alone.
Bookshop, launched by literary publisher Andy Hunter in January, claims to be a “socially conscious” alternative to Amazon. A spokesperson for the enterprise also said it has already earned more than $7.5 million for US indie bookshops and taken 2 percent of Amazon’s share of the market in its first year.
The platform allows booksellers to create their own digital stores and receive the full profit margin (30 percent) from each sale through their page. 10 percent of sales through Bookshop also go towards a fund that is divided between indie bookshops whether or not they are part of the platform. Chris Doeblin, the owner of three Book Culture locations in New York, said he saw his sales plummet by half as Amazon grew in popularity in the late 1990s. “We’ve barely held on. It’s been horrible,” Doeblin said in a telephone interview. “Independent bookshops do wonderful things for a community — they populate the storefronts, they offer a place to go.”
Link to the rest at CNN and thanks to N. for the tip
PG was prepared to wish this start-up well until he hit the “socially conscious alternative to Amazon” part of the OP.
For the record, PG is socially conscious. Mrs. PG is socially conscious. All the PG offspring and their friends are socially conscious.
And we’ve all used Amazon even more than ever during the Age of Covid.
Plus, referencing the OP, “populating the storefronts” is a community service that doesn’t require books. One populator fills up the space pretty much as well as another. PG suspects a retail establishment selling beer and liquor might generate more customer traffic and pay more state and local taxes to help the community than your typical indie bookstore would.
Run by a literary publisher who is socially conscious. Now, that’s woke.
I’m always amused and/or infuriated by these implicit attacks on the Other. Because that’s what “Buy Local!” movements are.
On the one hand, absentee landlords and investors are generally sh*theads. They don’t know community needs and don’t care, being interested only in the next quarterly report. They engage in unfair labor practices (usually some form of union-busting) as a way of life. They squeeze suppliers and pay late. They misuse customer history data to hone intrusive marketing efforts.
On the other hand, local merchants (especially those who have inherited a store from a prior generation in the same business) are generally sh*theads. They substitute their own, idiosyncratic, entitled/stable wealth preferences for community needs and don’t care, being interested only in accreting power in the community through excess rents (their prices on fungibles ordinarily being higher than the absentee-landlords charge). They engage in unfair labor practices of a different nature (usually outright discrimination) as a way of life. They squeeze suppliers and pay late. They misuse customer history data to directly invade customer privacy within the community.†
So a kneejerk “local is better” doesn’t get a lot of respect from me. It’s much too complicated for that… especially when dealing with only-marginally-fungible circumstances. It’s one thing entirely to substitute the mass-market paperback of Joe Author’s latest blockbuster novel from Retailer A to Retailer B… and that might be just because Retailer B’s layout is friendlier to customers using mobility devices (the reason I stopped patronizing the “acclaimed” local indie store after surgery). It’s another thing entirely when Retailer B doesn’t carry it, and suggests (either overtly or just through its inventory) Josephine Author’s blockbuster from last year. Especially when, as a customer, I’m looking for a foreign-language poetry collection (available through the out-of-town online store) and not a blockbuster.
This meme is just plain bad economic thought. Local/”smaller” ownership of the means of distribution is neither inherently better nor worse than any other ownership structure. Just ask Borderlands Books’ investors and customers (n.b. I do not claim knowledge of complete “truth” here but do know the players and the store… including in a business sense). Too often, it’s a question of choosing the next fraternity membership chairman (which includes the unstated right to supervise hazing).
† I am reminded of a local pharmacist of a non-chain pharmacy who mentioned that he had filled a daughter’s prescription to her father after church one day. The pharmacist was highly respected in the community and never suffered the broken arm that the daughter did over birth-control pills prescribed for hormonal imbalance — nor any other consequence. (Unfortunately, I did have to deal with it… as the father’s CO.)
The New Progressive Party candidate for Governor in PR was last week accused of sexual harrassment (along with promises of a cozy high salary job when elected) by his physical trainer. With witnesses, emails, and recordings.
His reply?
“I’m unmarried.”
There’s sh*theads all over, of both sexes and all ages.
Someone should inform CNN that ‘indie book’ and ‘indie bookstore’ are not the same thing.
They lost me at $26B.
And at 2%.
Yeah, right.
$7.5M to bookstores —> $25M a year in sales.
At last report, Kindle Unlimited paid out to *authors* $32.M.
Not impressed.
I presume that what “lost” you was the writer’s mathematical illiteracy?
You’re making Bookshop look too good by comparing the latest KU monthly author payments to Bookshop’s yearly figures.
I’ve taken an irrational(?) dislike to Bookshop since CrimeReads – whose postings PG sometimes quotes – started linking it’s books to Bookshop rather than providing a choice of retailers. It’s not exactly helpful to put your pro bookshop prejudices ahead of your readers’ convenience and send them to a retailer who overcharges and doesn’t yet operate in my country. Their boasts about their subsidies to bookshops don’t move me: now if the money went to the authors rather than the intermediaries …
I was trying to be polite. Which is hard for me.
If I wasn’t I might have pointed out the swiss cheese math holes. Like:
– If their bookstore payout is 30% and their first year they delivered $7.5M then their first *year* gross sales was $25M. That is a bit less than the $30M+ Kindle Unlimited pays its *authors* in one *month*. That $25M in gross might deliver $3M to the tradpubbed author. Or zero. (90% of the time, by publisher earn-out stats.)
– Their characterization of the US book market at $26B is off. That includes *every* book sold in the US including museum guides, textbooks, auto repair manuals, etc. The trade book business Amazon “dominates” at 60% is $15B which puts Amazon’s share at $9B (vs B&N at $2B.) 2% of Amazon’s business is $180M a year. A bit away from $25M. (Even more so if Amazon truly commanded 60% of the full $26B publishing world, which would be $15.6B or more than the entire trade book business.)
– Indie bookstores run around 5% of the trade business ($15B) or about $750M a year. Also quite a bit from $25M. Their $7.5M earnings would be 1% of their business. (Assuming all the sales through BOOKSTORE were new and not their regulars avoiding a drive and auto-cannibalization.)
As for the “socially conscious” book buyer, that market is spoken for by the likes of Powell and The Strand.
I’m most skeptical that they are at all taking share from Amazon. Instead, odds are they’re taking share from non-participating Indies with comparable pricing.
The whole “bragging about tiny sales” bit reminds me of the Cool-er eReader back in early 2010, puffing relevant over selling 25,000 fruity colored readers in a whole year. Whee! (Amazon was moving around a million.) They were bankrupt within six months.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COOL-ER
These folks need to take tbeir business model to France.