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How Bookshop.org Survives and Thrives in Amazon’s World

Wired: “…What started as a favor done on a business-trip whim has since become the great project of Hunter’s professional life. In its first few years of existence, Bookshop defied even its founder’s expectations and demonstrated how helpful its model could be for small businesses. Now, Hunter has a new plot twist in mind: He wants to show business owners how to scale up without selling out—without needing to kill the competition. The problem for independent bookstores is that many of them don’t have the bandwidth to run their own online stores. Their inventories and shipping capabilities are limited by their non-Amazonian budgets. Plus, sometimes they don’t want to participate in ecommerce; the romance of stuffed shelves and reading nooks and thoughtfully selected staff picks are central to their existence. Removing those experiences seems antithetical—even though it might be necessary—to the bottom line. 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.)..”

 

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