> Bookshop offers another option. Say you’re a small bookstore owner. It takes only a few minutes to set up a digital storefront on Bookshop’s website, list what books you want to sell, and, if you want, curate collections of titles to reflect your store’s worldview. You don’t have to actually stock any of the books yourself; Bookshop partners with the wholesaler Ingram to fulfill orders, so you’re off the hook for inventory and shipping. You get a 30 percent cut of the cover price on any book sold through your storefront. (If you’re a blogger, writer, influencer, or other bookish type, you can join Bookshop as an individual, even if you don’t own a brick-and-mortar bookstore, and take home a 10 percent cut on whatever you sell.)
I'm confused. It sounds like the independent booksellers in this scenario are doing basically nothing of note, their web store fronts are just an ad for bookshop.org where the indie gets a large cut. Is that right?
Book curation, or for that matter, any trustworthy product curation, is highly valuable. You used to be able to ask a bookshop keeper for recommendations based on your preferences and reading history. However, most independent bookshops have now disappeared from the UK. If you only read one genre, such as romantic novels, recommendation engines will easily find your next good read. If your reading habits are more eclectic, this provides a way to look at curated content from your favourite storefronts.
> Book curation, or for that matter, any trustworthy product curation, is highly valuable
I can vouch for that. A small foreign-books bookshop in the city I live in has recently hired a new bookshop seller and, as such, the selection of books has slightly changed. For the better, from my pov, as I'm now in there every week or so and each time I get something I didn't know I had wanted (until seeing it in there, that is).
All this to say that the unknown unknowns are a real problem when it comes to purchasing books, and a curator who can solve that for the clients of a bookshop is a highly valuable asset.
This is an interesting point and a crux for many small businesses. I suppose curation is being monetized many ways, including subscription clothing boxes. In theory, I think this represents the problem that "influencers" should have fixed.
"influencers" might have fixed it apart from the constant prodding from algorithms and other market forces that pushes them all to cater to the broadest possible market segment themselves. Can't emphasise enough how much youtube shoves in your face when one of your videos is doing worse than your average - when your low effort easy to digest drivel gets the biggest numbers, (more than the passion project you put your heart into) your spirit is crushed and you make more of it.
Unfortunately, most influencers get paid to endorse products and are nothing more than human ad bots. There was a sting in the UK where unwitting influencers agreed to promote a poisonous cyanide drink.
It's also very expensive, for an indie bookstore, to get book metadata legally since Baker and Taylor was acquired by Follett and to drive online traffic in a cost effectively.
> It sounds like the independent booksellers in this scenario are doing basically nothing of note, their web store fronts are just an ad for bookshop.org where the indie gets a large cut. Is that right?
I mean, they're sending traffic. I don't think that's "nothing of note".
They are lending their brand to Bookshop.org, which profits also from selling books (that’s how they can afford to stay in business).
I’m a big fan of Bookshop. I just wish they could break into the DRM free epub business. Libro.fm managed to get into the DRM free audiobook business somehow.
Amazon is doing the same with amazon.com/shop/{username} if you sign up as an influencer — I think it's a little known feature though. Works internationally.
If anybody here is buying online from a store that is not on the list, let me know. (With a short description of what makes it special.)
I got inspired to build this when I saw how much of an outry the closing of Book Depository caused. Although I have not yet completely understood what made Book Depository special. Was it only the free international shipping? Or was there more to it?
I have bought from Foyles, Waterstones and Blackwells - all in the UK. What makes them special, well they are not Amazon. And Foyles used to be amazing, I haven't been for many years but it used to be the largest bookshop in the world in shelf length.
Foyles has been owned by Waterstones since 2018 but still keeps its separate branding. Not that you shouldn’t shop there but it’s technically the same thing.
World of Books is a second-hand book retailer with free shipping in the UK. They don't have every possible book in stock, but you can usually find what you need there.
Interesting. I am looking around their page, but can't find a description on how it works. They say nothing about a CD or something, so it seems you can listen to the audiobooks on their site? How do the local bookstores come into play then?
> I have not yet completely understood what made Book Depository special. Was it only the free international shipping? Or was there more to it?
My understanding is that their business model was to offer a really wide selection of titles, instead of the "top 10" type offering Amazon is mostly about. I think that's a significant part of it.
I apologize if it came across as I made the claim that they really do; I was making an attempt at summarizing my understanding of how the business model for bookdepository might carry some value adding proposition to customers that extended beyond "just" free international shipping. That understanding comes entirely from this quote from a Guardian article about Book Depository's demise:
> The Gloucester-based bookseller was founded in 2004 by Stuart Felton and Andrew Crawford, a former Amazon employee, with the mantra of “selling ‘less of more’ rather than ‘more of less’”. It aimed to sell 6m titles covering a wide variety of genres and topics, as opposed to focusing solely on bestsellers. [0]
Seeing as Book Depository later became a subsidiary of Amazon, it's fair to question whether that model held true. I don't have enough insight into Amazon's catalogue to say either way. Also, I can't remember to which degree Amazon relied on "other sellers" back in 2004 or if that came later ("other sellers" being a way to offer a wider selection than what one carries oneself in retail).
To answer your question for an example of a title Amazon doesn't have; I recently found myself recently looking for "Hur svårt kan det va'" by Eva Bodfäldt, which may admittedly be a contrived example, although Amazon does carry another title in Swedish by the same author [1] (though used and from a third party). As it happens, Book Depository has the title... alas, it's not available for delivery anymore.
Wordery and BooksPlease are the only global free delivery I know of.
awesomebooks is free delivery for UK, but their international delivery is reasonable at £2.99 (+ £1.00 to £4.00 additional items: https://www.awesomebooks.com/help/shipping)
I've been using biblio.com for the last year or so. I don't really know how it works, but lots and lots of independent bookstores sell books through it.
I have no idea, the whole thing's pretty opaque. You'd think they'd all want to be on all the 'aggregator' sites.
Sometimes I've been able to get a better deal going directly to the site of the bookseller. Biblio will have a lower price but higher shipping than on the seller's site. Not always though
I'm currently testing out Blackwell's (blackwells.co.uk) as an alternative to Book Depository. They at least deliver to me in Finland, although I'm not super impressed with their dispatch times. Order made on the 5th of April is still being processed.
Another alternative that I was told of, which I haven't tested yet, is Wordery (wordery.com). They advertise free worldwide shipping like Book Depository.
Shipping prices seem awful though. A book advertised as 8.87€ will be 26.74€ after the taxes and shipping are added in checkout. Meanwhile the same book is around 17€ on both Wordery and Blackwell's.
On a somewhat related note: I'm having a lot of trouble buying used books (I have a knack for out of print non-fiction) from outside the EU. Many independent bookstores don't have the means to comply with the stringent IOSS rules and many of the books I bought (via biblio.com) were held up at customs, who then slap on extra VAT and a processing fee. When I don't pay the fee (effectively doubling the price of the book), the books typically get lost...
Does anyone know whether bookshop.org or any of the other networks ship to the EU without customs issues?
> Does anyone know whether bookshop.org or any of the other networks ship to the EU without customs issues?
Ehrm… you are required to pay import duty and VAT for any imported goods into the EU (there are no low value exceptions anymore as of a few years ago). There’s no way to circumvent that.
The issue isn't the import duty and VAT, the issue is the 20€ or more fee that the shipping companies charge for the privilege of handling the customs administration for you.
In Belgium for example books have 0% import duty and 6% VAT. Adding 20€, long delays, and a terrible customer experience (good luck trying to correct any data submitted to customs) to that is rarely worth the hassle.
That actually is via the postal service (BPost). The postage rates are reasonable, it's just the fee that they add for handling the customs administration that is unreasonable.
And this is more or less the same for the other shipping companies such as DHL, UPS, and FedEx.
Because the fee is per shipment, it's not that bad if you're receiving several hundred euros worth of products. But if you just want to receive a book, it can easily double the cost.
Hmm maybe it’s specific to Belgium? I remember in Germany you would pick up packages directly from the zollamt (customs office). You would pay any owed tax there, but I don’t remember there being any extra fee.
I know FedEx and UPS offer shipping options that are supposed to pre-pay any owed tax, but I don’t know if they charge a fee to do so and I’ve also had a terrible time getting things through customs using them in other countries.
Was this before the introduction of the IOSS rules? I can't imagine picking something up directly at customs. International shipping volume has increased a lot, customs does not have the capacity to store much.
The new rules have actually made shipping from Aliexpress easier. VAT is displayed and payed to Aliexpress, they handle customs (as long as total order value is less than €150). In practice they consolidate packages from several sellers into one shipment where possible (although of course with a long-tail delay), and fly it to their new distribution center in Luik.
Customs has a small presence, but because VAT is paid they're mostly concerned about other things such as counterfeits.
Last-mile shipping is then done by postal service, without any additional fees.
I would. Better World Books has always rubbed me the wrong way with their advertising. They donate a tiny fraction of their profit to charity but their whole schtick makes it seem like they are a non-profit. Especially their "book donation" boxes that they put all over the place. Which they turn around and sell for a pure profit. I also suspect they are just donating their worthless books but valuing those worthless books at some sort of face value to pump up their donation numbers.
Those look like big numbers (and interestingly they seem to have not budged upward since prior to 2019). But one must understand that the book business, especially the textbook business deals with a lot of worthless books that you have to find a way to get rid of. So anyone in the business donates or trashes/recycles a ton of books. Especially when you have book donation boxes all over the country.
As for the cash, they have been around for about 20 years now and have revenues around $65 million a year. So $25m in lifetime donations is not as much as it seems. Also, they don't say they donated that much cash, they said they have "raised" it. Which usually means through programs like asking customers to donate in addition to their order.
But I just remembered that they were sold to Better World Libraries in 2019, who is a non-profit associated with the internet archive. (It seems that I made a similar comment on HN back then but I have little recollection of it.) So maybe all of their profits go to a good cause now, I can't really find many details on the acquisition. But they were originally VC and PE funded. So I wonder if the business has dwindled like many book/textbook resale companies have over the last few decades. I can't imagine that a non-profit would pay any kind of premium for a for-profit business.
bookshop is nothing but a store front for ingram distribution (the monopolistic wholesaler in the US). they give a small cut to independent booksellers. debatable whether it's worth it for the bookstores or not.
The article has several anecdotes from actual bookshop owners that despite some ambivalence seem to demonstrate that it absolutely can be very worthwile for them.
hence me saying "debatable". it probably works better for smaller stores who aren't able to pay for a dedicated ecommerce platform. but it takes sales away from a store who already has an ecommerce store.
I usually buy from ThriftBooks.com which has an enormous second hand selection. The only time I buy new anymore is at the local bookstore (and even then, once nice thing about our local bookstore is that it has both new and used books on the shelves together rather than in separate stores or sections).
I learned about Bookshop from Pragmatic Programmer's website; they rely on Bookshop for selling print versions of their books (you can't order from PragProg directly). I bought a ton of their Elixir books, as well as some well-known CS titles, and the service is top-notch.
Will this service end up indiscriminately listing books that are likely to sell, or books that are buzzing on SNS, rather than recommending books that they think are good, like Amazon’s current affiliate program?
As long as they can send me books that aren't just thrown into a large box with room to be jostled around until they get damaged then they are way better than Amazon.
This is great. On a related note I let Amazon prime expire in February and it turns out there has been virtually no pain in the decision. I was spending way too much money on Amazon, and now I just get really what I need, often directly from the manufacturer, guaranteeing quality. And with password managers, signing up for accounts and logging into various vendor sites is not that bad anymore.
So many retailers support accountless Paypal Express checkout that managing accounts is much less of hassle than it once was.
Prime's, and by extension Amazon's, real moats are 1) that sweet sweet 'free' (actually 'no marginal cost') shipping and 2) aggregation. Google Shopping is trash, as are most shopping aggregators.
This works for certain kinds of products. Some products can only be bought in bulk from a manufacturer, requiring you to go to a physical store or webshop to purchase smaller quantities.
I'm confused. It sounds like the independent booksellers in this scenario are doing basically nothing of note, their web store fronts are just an ad for bookshop.org where the indie gets a large cut. Is that right?