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Please forgive my cynicism, but this strikes me as coming straight out of the, "we're building a tech company for social change," handbook. The handbook which t
by II2II 2y ago
Please forgive my cynicism, but this strikes me as coming straight out of the, "we're building a tech company for social change," handbook. The handbook which tries to lure people in with a promise, where their intent is to build their own corporate empire and to give everyone else the short stick in the end.
Don't get me wrong. If they were up there saying they were doing it for publishers or authors, I may find some integrity in their claim. After all, they are the ones hurting from Amazon's dominance, they are the ones who would benefit by bringing their products to consumers via other channels, and they are the ones bringing something to the table.
But independent bookstores? Don't get me wrong, I want to see them thrive. Yet it doesn't look like they are bringing much to the table here. Once you get past the landing page with books they (likely) curated for their intended market, there isn't much of a reason for them to exist in this particular marketplace. It doesn't much look like Bookshop.org facilitates them offering much unique to the particular bookstore's customers. For things like store events or community news or even a unique presentation of the store's products one would have to follow the links to the bookstore's social media pages or website.
While independent bookstores may benefit from an increased online presence in the short term, I'm left asking the question: what is preventing Bookshop.org from capturing their customers, decreasing commissions, and even blocking those links to the store's actual independent online presence in the medium to long term?
Maybe Bookshop.org's intent is genuine. The problem is that I've seen similar games being played out too many times before.
- greenie_beans 2y agobookshop.org is basically a website for ingram distribution, the primary distribution company for indies. all the bookselling members get a commission for all sales on the platform, so it is very beneficial to the participating bookstores. bookshop.org exists separately from a lot of stores ecommerce website, though the bigger stores don't always participate in bookshop because they fear it will take away from their ecommerce sales. it's more aimed towards smaller stores who can't afford the time or money for a good ecommerce store, but also, i'm assuming trying to compete with amazon seo which would ultimately support indies since they split commissions from all the sales. > While independent bookstores may benefit from an increased online presence in the short term, I'm left asking the question: what is preventing Bookshop.org from capturing their customers, decreasing commissions, and even blocking those links to the store's actual independent online presence in the medium to long term? trust. it was started by somebody whose career demonstrated they are committed to supporting indies and literature. if you've been around booksellers, then you know how important this trust is. the booksellers are also very loud and opinionated so the company will know if they are making wrong decisions. the stores feel like they have somewhat of an ownership to bookshop (though not legally). you might say, "well trust can be broken" and you're right but we're talking about a niche industry with a limited market size, and no potential for world domination/incentive to break the trust. i know it's crazy but some folks still do business like that. the platform's success depends on the relationship with the booksellers, so what happens when they break that trust? before this, indies didn't have much helping them online except custom ecommerce stores that some stores can't afford and are generally not good software imo. bookshop.org is hardly competing with amazon here. there is no huge market capture they're after. they're just trying to help bookstores stay alive and compete. source, i made ecommerce software for independent bookstores: https://bookhead.net https://bookhead.net (edits for pre-coffee typos)
- Talanes 2y agoThat all makes sense for physical products, it's just less clear what the local bookstore is actually adding to the process for a digital e-book transaction.
- greenie_beans 2y agowhen you are a bookseller on the sales floor, sometimes a customer asks for an e-book, and the bookseller won't be able to sell them an e-book copy. indies have never been able to sell this to their customers. now they can, indirectly, by telling them to buy it on bookshop and they'll get a cut.
- bwb 2y agoAnd bookshop.org has already sent 36+ million to indie bookstores. It also removes the cost of trying to run an online bookstore of any kind. Hopefully, they are headed to audio books next.
- bsjiendn 2y agoThe CEO has answered this question. The local bookstore doesn’t add anything to this process. But if bookshop.org doesn’t support the local bookstore then bookshop.org doesn’t have any value to the reader either. They’d might as well go to Amazon at that point.
- insane_dreamer 2y agoThey don't add anything. But they all get a small slice of profits of the sale regardless, without having to set up their own ebook store.
- greenie_beans 2y agothey promote the site, so they help drive sells. you wouldn't even know what bookshop.org was if it weren't for the booksellers.
- bsjiendn 2y agoThere was nothing stopping bookshop.org from not sending any money from readers buying directly from their website to local bookstores for the past 5 years either. So they have a track record. But more importantly for the cynic, their CEO has publicly answered this question as well. Basically, if they’re not sending money to local bookstores, there’s no reason for them to exist. There’s no reason for anyone to buy a book from them instead of Amazon if they stop fulfilling their purpose of supporting local bookstores.
- freeamz 2y agoWhen you buy. You can chose to put the profit to a specific local bookshop or into a group fund. Sounds like a great coop idea. Maybe the only thing to compete with heavily subsidized Amazon big corp. It is sooo annoying to NOT be able to find any books online except for AMZ or the companies they bought up goodread.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoBookshop.org is also highly political. It used to be that bookstores would be politically neutral and feature content of all kinds. Now those stores often put political content the employees want to support on the main shelves. Bookshop is the online version of that, and instead of being a bookstore they were doing things like getting involved in the BLM movement. This isn’t in the spirit of true bookstores in my opinion.
- WeylandYutani 2y agoBook stores have always put their own picks on the store shelves. Arguably it is one of the reasons for independent book stores to exist- the personal touch.
- blackeyeblitzar 2y agoThis wasn’t my experience until the 2010s. Before that, bookstores did not choose those picks to be obviously politically biased. I don’t think bookstores or libraries should be in the business of propagandizing customers.