Carl Annarummo sorts through used books in the basement of the Brookline Booksmith. (Photo by Travis ... [+]
The tension between Amazon and bookstores—particularly independent bookstores—has long been pronounced, as customers continue to buy books from the mega-company in lieu of shopping local. To help indies reach and retain customers in this web-heavy selling climate, three new platforms have launched or are launching soon.
Earlier this month, audiobook retailer Libro.fm, which sells individual audiobooks in addition to audiobook subscriptions and splits the profits with your local bookstore, launched Bookstore Link. Bookstore Link helps readers buy physical books from their local bookstores by providing users with shareable book links that connect viewers to stores near them.
Linking is an important part of book publicity—readers, publishers, publicists, and media outlets share links to books they want to promote on social platforms, in articles, and in emails. Bookstore Link allows these folks to share book links that support independent booksellers rather than chains or Amazon.
Publishers and media outlets, for example, can search for the book they’d like to promote on BookstoreLink.com, then share the resulting page. Visitors to the page can search for their local bookstore, and are linked out to the bookstore’s purchase page. The bookstore keeps 100% of the revenue.
Bookshop.org, which launched this week, also knows the power of linking. Many linkers—media outlets and influencers in particular—rely on linking to companies with affiliate programs to generate crucial revenue. In contrast to Amazon, a major player in the affiliate space, Bookshop.org serves as an online bookstore with a robust affiliate program meant explicitly to support indie bookshops.
Media outlets, authors, and influencers who link to Bookshop.org receive a 10% commission (Amazon provides 4.5%), while 10% of total sales are split evenly between participating independent bookstores. In addition, bookstores who prefer not to manage e-commerce and fulfillment themselves may use Bookshop.org as their online commerce platform, and receive a 25% commission on books sold.
This spring will see the launch of a platform also meant to improve bookstores’ web presence. Edelweiss360, created by publishing service company Above the Treeline, will both provided branded sites and apps to bookshops and offer them robust email marketing management. Bookstores will be able to create customized email marketing campaigns that target past customers utilizing their previous purchase data, much like major online retailers do with purchase recommendations.
While each of these services tackles a different issue facing independent bookstores, they all serve to improve their visibility and access to customers.
