How an Ethical Online Bookshop Disrupted Amazon’s Book Market
It took less than three months
I love to read. High fantasy, self-help, biographies —it doesn’t matter. I read books the same way I breathe air. But lately, buying books online has become a challenge for readers like me. I want to support my local bookshops and my favorite authors, but I’m also used to convenience and speed when it comes to getting books delivered to my doorstep.
Surprisingly, even with the big ocean that is the internet, there’s not much competition to the biggest fish in the bookselling world: Amazon. And I don’t want to buy from Amazon.
Amazon started as an online bookshop in 1995. Bookstores all over the world watched as Amazon took over their sales. And they did nothing. In fact, they seemed to carry on exactly as normal and hoped the problem would go away. As we know now, it didn’t.
“There are almost 2,000 bookstores in the country, and only about 150 of them have good online shopping platforms,” Andy Hunter, CEO and founder of Bookshop told InsideHook. “That leaves a lot of stores that haven’t adapted, and Amazon’s kind of eating their lunch.”
Less than three years ago, Book World, the fourth-biggest bookstore closed, citing Amazon as the prime factor. “Books aren’t going away, but bookstores are,” said Matthew Duket, a prior Book World sales associate, told the New York Times.
And yet now, an unlikely savior emerges. In under a year, an online shop disrupted the undisruptable Amazon. Bookshop stormed the arena, leaving Amazon scratching its head.
What happened?
Bookshop Hits Amazon Where it Hurts
Why don’t I want to buy from Amazon? The same reasons Ethical Consumer suggests boycotting them:
“Our research highlights many ethical issues…climate change, environmental reporting, habitats & resources, pollutions and toxins, arms & military supply, human rights, worker’s rights, supply chain management, irresponsible marketing, animal rights, animal testing, factory farming, use of controversial technologies, political activities, and anti-social finance.”
The major issue that stops me from buying from Amazon is the persistent, nagging, undeniable understanding that by doing so, I’m contributing to an unsustainable, degrading, dangerous business.
Bookshop, whether intentionally or not, has hit Amazon in its single Achilles heel — ethics. By becoming a B-Corp, Bookshop smoothly overtook Amazon in its area of weakness. This means BookShop’s sole directive isn’t to turn a profit for shareholders but, rather, they’re legally empowered to pursue positive stakeholder impact alongside profit.
For a shopper like myself, it means I can buy books that I feel good about. It means for every dollar I spend on Bookshop’s site, it’s a dollar directed toward a positive social, environmental, and cultural benefit.
Unlike their main competitor.
Bookshop Is Built for the Internet
Borders, that book-selling institution that features in so many of my formative bookstore memories, went bust after 40 years of business. It made a number of mistakes along the way, but one of the biggest was not investing in online. Instead, they leaned hard into physical sales.
Despite what naysayers may claim, online shopping is here to stay.
I love the feeling of a physical book in my hands. There’s something, for me, that will never be replaced by an e-book. But as I transition to the convenience of online shopping, I need my browsing and buying experience to be slick, or I’m gone.
Many bookstores, like Borders, tried too late to change gears. It didn’t work as they — too slowly — shifted their sizeable selves over to the internet.
Bookshop started there. As a citizen of Gen Z, I note how user-friendly their web design is. They’re on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. They’ve mobilized a small army of online influencers and book lovers, like Zibby Owens, to promote and support them.
In other words, they’ve built their platform with a full understanding of what the landscape looks like.
Benefitting Authors, Publishers, and Local Bookstores Is Bookshop’s Main Directive
BookShop’s coup de grâce was as simple as it was subtle: partner with people who thoroughly love books.
Take Inside Hook as an example. They frequently write about books, and now every time they do, they’ll point people to Bookshop. They earn a small commission, of course, but that’s not what made them shift.
They were persuaded away from Amazon not for the price tag but because they love books, and they love that Bookshop does, too.
This is the nail in the coffin: For people like me who care about not just the books we read but the places we buy them and the authors who create them, this gives us a way to give back.
It’s the masterstroke — Bookstore obviously can’t compete head to head with their competitors on price, so they go for the knees instead. They steal away their customers by selling them not books but a relationship. Support. Love. Community. And of course, books, too.
How to Disrupt an Industry Giant
Time and time again, we’ve seen how talented competitors have managed to sneak in past the biggest guard dogs in their industry. Slack took over the saturated instant messaging market. We Zoom our meetings, dates, and concerts. And now Bookshop is looming large as a competitor to the undisruptable Amazon in their own home court of online book sales.
“My goal was to capture 1% of Amazon’s book market, and we’re there now,” Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter told NBC News during a phone interview in April. “I thought it was going to take three years to get there, and instead it took 11 weeks.”
Bookshop has managed to not only raise over $1.5 million dollars for local bookstores but also has taken a significant proportion of sales from the biggest online competitor in the world. They may not put Amazon out of business, but they may help indie bookstores stay afloat.
Bookshop managed this incredible feat with three tactics: It took advantage of its main competitor’s weak spot. It built its empire intentionally to thrive on the internet. And, finally, it has an open and obvious relationship with the people its customers and readers want to support the most.