Well, Indie authors seem to have gotten a nice little belated Christmas present. Up until a week ago, I admit I had never heard of bookshop.org. And to be honest, I still do not completely understand how it works. From what I have read, I get the concept– but I don’t know how authors or readers leverage or access it etc. I’ll have to do some more digging on that. But- I have had a couple of conversations, so I think I can at least present an introductory level explanation without sounding like an idiot:)
Okay- so bookshop. org has a commitment to indie authors. Okay, that part seems new. But they have a commitment to independent BOOKSELLERS. That part isn’t new– unless I am very mistaken and I will have to retract that in an upcoming post:) From the way it reads, it sounds like they function as a dispensary, handling inventory, shipping etc. I don’t know if that entails warehouses of actual physical books or if that works via a print-on-demand basis. Either way, still kind of cool.
Now- what they do? Independent bookstores– who often can’t buy from the larger distributors– so that the little guy has an entry-point where they can compete with barnes and noble etc. I think it is accessed through an online channel. which means the small independent bookshop doesn’t have to carry the overhead of stocking books that might not sell, or taking up precious shefl space they may not have.
THE BONUS PART– if I have this correctly– anyone who buys through bookshop.org– can send the profit to the indie bookstore of their choice. So- if you have a local bookstore that doesn’t happen to carry the book you want, they can still get a profit from the sale. I think influencers and bloggers can also create “curated lists” or bookshops– and earn a percentage of profits for the referral. So- if I created a page of every fantastic fantasy book ever… and sent those links to bookshop.org (provided they do carry it), I– or whoever has the “storefront” list– could earn a bit of profit from that. Now, I doubt I will/would do that.. because I have too many plates spinning as it is… but I like the idea of being able to create a customized bookshop. And I like the idea that it may take a tiny corner out of the giants who have a stranglehold on the book industry:)
Here’s a bit of extra from one of my editors, who might be quoting David gaughrin (an indie expert:)|
from Dustin: Little human touches like, if as an editor, I want to create a bookshop that listed all the authors whose books I’ve worked on, I could share that and get a little bonus $ if someone buys the book. Not unlike an Amazon affiliate link, but more personalized, and with the added bonus of supporting indie bookstores.
I think it’s kind of unavoidable that they open up to traditional publishers because it increases the value that they offer to readers. It’s going to be a hard sell talking people into using this app on their phone instead of the Kindle app. It becomes an even harder sell if they can’t buy any popular books.
But imagine this, you meet someone at an event, they buy one of your books, and you hand them a card with your bookshop link and say here, once you finished with my book, you can go buy more at this website, whether you choose to buy paperback or digital, I’ll still get an extra 10% when you do and your local bookstore will get 10% too.
I still think it’s going to fail because it requires a lot of wishful thinking. But doesn’t it feel good to think about? whether you choose to buy paperback or digital.
It offers a lot of opportunities to collaborate, too. Like, I could have a shelf in my personal storefront that includes all of my friends books, too. Mini co-ops could form without a whole lot of effort being put into it.
From David Gaughrin
1. In one sense, indie authors and indie bookstores should be natural allies but I guess you could say the structural nature of the industry always placed them at opposite ends of the market – and opposing sides of arguments as a result, I suppose.
Which is why I was both surprised and delighted to see the good people at Draft2Digital have inked a distribution partnership with Bookshop.org – the independent retailer that gives a meaty cut of each sale to indie bookstores.
This is a real win-win, and potentially a significant one, according to the interview in Jane Friedman’s newsletter today, where the CEO detailed his ambition to aggressively grow sales of genre fiction; he sees self-publishers as central to that growth.
We will be speaking about this again because I think it’s interesting and cool.
SO READERS– what do you think about this new development?