America Now Has 70% More Bookstores Than in 2020, Says Bookshop.org Founder (fastcompany.com)
- Reference: 0182982440
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/04/27/052242/america-now-has-70-more-bookstores-than-in-2020-says-bookshoporg-founder
- Source link: https://www.fastcompany.com/91529634/independent-bookstore-day-bookshop-org-founder-on-how-small-retailers-are-taking-on-amazon
> Hunter created Bookshop.org in January 2020 to help independent bookstores survive by utilizing e-commerce... "There were over 5,000 bookstores in the American Booksellers Association in 1995, which is one year after Amazon launched. By 2019, that had gone down to 1,889, so more than half of them disappeared." He says he never could have predicted how the pandemic would accelerate his company's growth... "All these stores that had been trying to get around e-commerce or never really launching or building their website, they had to sell online. That was the only way they could survive during the pandemic...."
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> "Our goal is to help independent local bookstores get their fair share of online sales, which would end up being maybe 10% of Amazon's market share," he says. "And right now we're at about 2%, so we have a long way to go. But a lot of people didn't even think we could ever get 1%...." Bookshop.org has given almost $47 million back to local bookstores. For Hunter, it's not just about the money but changing the way society thinks. He's delighted that many big organizations no longer use Amazon affiliate links, choosing to send people his way instead. "People have absorbed the message that they should support independent bookstores when they buy books," he says.
[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/91529634/independent-bookstore-day-bookshop-org-founder-on-how-small-retailers-are-taking-on-amazon
So now you have (Score:2)
at least 17.
Re: (Score:2)
Somehow Barnes and Noble and BAM (Books a Million, what's left of Borders) are still around in the US.
They're probably making more money selling overpriced coffee and toys than books, though.
Speaking of Amazon and books... (Score:4, Insightful)
Does anyone else just not trust Amazon anymore for, ironically, books?
The place went from a great bargain book seller to a place that sells horrible reprints.
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The reason I pulled away from Amazon is because I'm not going to sit around pissing myself about the rich while funding their wealth at the same time. Too bad too many assholes don't feel the same about the situation. I still like physical books, for the most part, so now I buy used from Half Priced Books who has a local storefront.
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Amazon used to have fairly-priced used books, but since the price of those have went through the roof in the past 5 years, eBay now seem much more reasonable.
But even for used books, you're right. I've bought $50 new books from Amazon and they don't remember how to package them properly, they're just loose in a huge box and end up with damaged corners.
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It's much, much worse than that. Amazon books since 2023 are often AI generated slop. Garbage through and through, maskerading as anything interesting. The company simply don't even do the simplest checks about what they accept in their inventory.
I never buy books post 2022 any more. The only exception is if I know the author. New authors? Sorry, you can blame the tech bros.
I do however still buy a lot of older books. I've seen the near future, and the information pollution is going to get worse before
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> Amazon used to have fairly-priced used books, but since the price of those have went through the roof in the past 5 years, eBay now seem much more reasonable.
Amazon doesn't sell used books - Amazon hosts used book sellers on it's platform, and the sellers set the prices. Your beef is with the sellers, not Amazon. Now, maybe Amazon is over-charging for the referral/processing/shipping services the used book sellers rely on, and that drives up prices, but thats a choice the used books sellers make...
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> I'm finding that a lot of printed books today are horribly edited. It use to be rare I would find a misprint in a book.
> I'm finding that a lot of printed books today are horribly edited. It use to be rare I would find a misprint in a book.
A lot of new fiction today is essentially self-published. In some ways, this is great. It's easier for new authors to get their books in print, rather than dealing with endless rejection letters, and those that are successful keep more of their money. On the other hand, it means that readers can no longer rely on publishers to act as quality filters. This shows up both in an increase in slop (AI and otherwise) on the market and in a significant reduction in professional editing. Often there is no profess
Statistics are fun (Score:5, Interesting)
70% is impressive until you realize it’s ~130 new stores and total stores are still less than half of the stores before Amazon was founded. It will be interesting to see if the trend continues and how long new stores stay in business.
Great news for all authors and publishers (Score:2)
With independents and the Big 4 there's plenty to read. And there's nothing like walking into a physical book store. It's a needed thrid space, in a way.
E-Commerce or Brick and Mortar stores? (Score:3)
The article seems to read that more independent shops are selling online. You only need an inventory and a couple of people (or robots) to fill e-commerce orders.
I'd rather see it be a 70% increase in real brick and mortar stores with corresponding staff. I miss the days of Borders Bookstores and the local bookstore like we had in my old hometown. Barnes and Noble doesn't even come close to Borders back in the day.
OSS model for physical stores (Score:2, Interesting)
This is clever and good. It sets up real competition against mega corporations like Amazon. More of this please.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Meanwhile in reality per-pupil spending in the US is some of the highest in the entire world and it's far left policies like abolishing phonics and claiming expecting the right answer in math is "white supremacy" that lead to this, because a neurotic and ignorant population is easier to radicalize.
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> They have underfunded public education since the raygun
America spends more per pupil than any other country except Norway and Luxembourg.
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I wish more people cared about device lock-in and DRM encumberance of e-books. Sites like ebooks.com present lots of DRM free options with an easy way to filter by that (unlike Amazon and Google).
But, even totally locked-in e-readers with planned obsolesce and eventual excommunication from the garden (while still perfectly functional) are convenient enough that people put up with it. Sadly.
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> This is clever and good. It sets up real competition against mega corporations like Amazon. More of this please.
What?
As best as I can deduce, what they do is compete, directly, with Amazon as a single, large, online book store shipping books they stock to customers that visit their site. Customer's can choose to "identify" a local book store they want to "sponsor" (my word), and the large vendor "bookshop.org" will literally give the local bookstore money as a "commission" (again, my word) on book sales they local book store was never involved in. If a customer doesn't pick a local bookstore to "sponsor", a share of