Bookshop site celebrates first birthday, as Vanderbilt hails 'incredible' year

Retail website Bookshop.org, which describes itself as the “ethical book-buying alternative to Amazon”, is celebrating its first birthday in the UK today (2nd November), with managing director Nicole Vanderbilt hailing a “really incredible” first year.

Since its UK launch at the beginning of the second national lockdown in November 2020, the website has generated more than £1.7m for the 480 bookshops on the platform.

“That has been incredibly rewarding” Vanderbilt told The Bookseller. “I went into this with a deep love for independent bookshops, that’s why I joined the team to do this, and my love for them and awe of them has only grown.” 

She said: “The biggest thing for me and the entire team is the impact that we’ve been able to have on these bookshops. With the money they have earned on the platform, people have invested in these small businesses which are often incredibly difficult to invest in—a new lick of paint, new cafes, a new coffee machine, all kinds of different things to try and invest in their businesses.” She said some booksellers had been able to keep on staff, or even give out Christmas bonuses, because of the extra money they were able to make off the platform.  

Indies receive 30% of the cover price from each sale they make through the platform, with a further 10% from affiliate sales going into a shared profit pool split between all the shops. The website enables customers to order books online, which are sent out from the wholesaler Gardners. Independent shops that sign up to Bookshop.org are not involved in this process, and do not store or post the books in question, or have to provide any upfront financial investment.

This provides booksellers with access to a huge catalogue of books, without having to take any risk on selection, and enables more specialist bookshops to sell books they wouldn’t otherwise sell and make money from them, Vanderbilt said. "It’s giving small businesses the ability to interact directly with customers and focus on the part of the job that they love,” she said. “You don’t open a bookshop because you want to unpack and repack boxes and stand in line at the post office." 

The platform has been widely supported by the industry. Jess Paul, manager of Max Minerva’s Marvellous Books in Bristol, used the shop’s commission to allay fears of its future during lockdown: “We opened Max Minerva's in 2018, and in this time have seen high street retail undergo some huge changes. Brexit uncertainty, stock uncertainty, Covid closures and online selling were just some of the challenges we all faced. In April 2020, we weren't sure how we were going to get through the year and pay our bills. Bookshop.org couldn’t have arrived at a better time—with the commission from them, we have been able to pay all our bills, as well as offer our hard-working staff bonuses and raised wages.” 

Olivia Rosenthall owner of Maldon Books in Essex, opened her shop in Christmas 2019. While she was able to operate a home delivery service during the first lockdown, she also signed up to Bookshop.org as an “added bonus”.  

She said: “It’s not been for everybody, because at the end of the day the best way to support your independent bookshop is to buy directly from them”. But she added a lot of her customers who have spoken to her in store said they first found out about her shop on the platform. "It’s been good to get bookshops’ names out there... I think it’s just a way of directing people away from Amazon, and the fact that the profits do go to bookshops means it is a good thing for customers to use—and for them to know it is benefiting people.” 

Asher Woolford, co-owner of Darling Reads in West Yorkshire, added: “We’re happy with Bookshop.org, it provides us with a steady stream of income for very little effort on our part. It’s certainly not been a lifeline for us but it’s good to know we’ve got that resource available if we need to push it.” 

It’s also proved popular with some publishers. Jamie Byng, c.e.o. and publisher at Canongate Books, said: “The last year has been a tumultuous one, to say the least.  But one wholly positive aspect of it has been the arrival of Bookshop.org, a wondrous initiative that has celebrated and rewarded the hugely important independent bookselling scene. By supporting this vital part of the book ecosystem, Bookshop.org has provided a unique means for independent booksellers to flourish in our increasingly online world while reminding readers of the value of bookshops, the health of which is essential to the future of distinctive writing and diverse reading.” 

This year, the platform began to list its "Indie Champions", which are the books that have generated the most money for bookshops each month. To mark its first anniversary, the platform shared its top 50 books for the year, with 2020 Booker Prize winner Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (Picador) holding the top spot, followed by Richard Osman’s The Thursday Murder Club (Viking), Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell (Tinder Press), The Midnight Library by Matt Haig (Canongate) and Girl, Woman, Other by Bernardine Evaristo (Hamish Hamilton) .

Meryl Halls, m.d. of the Booksellers Association, which helped to facilitate the UK launch, said the platform's first anniversary in the UK trade was “a moment for celebration”. She told The Bookseller: "The team at Bookshop.org quickly established themselves as an invaluable resource for online bookselling, both for those shops who use it exclusively, and those who use it in tandem with their own e-commerce offers. It allowed the indie bookselling sector a viable way to get online market share at a crucial moment during the pandemic, when the future of bookselling looked very much in jeopardy, and we have been nothing but impressed by the continued sense of mission, support, investment and engagement with indie bookshops that the whole team at Bookshop.org have demonstrated.  

“It’s an option for bookshops, not an obligation, obviously, and looking at some of the moving testimonials from bookshops who have embraced the platform does illustrate the impact it has had for many.  We wish the team, in the UK and the US, a very happy birthday, and thank them for their vision and nerve in jumping into a new market when the original entity was barely established.” 

When the platform first launched it faced some criticism on how effective the website would be at supporting independent bookshops, as well as data and GDPR concerns.  

James Daunt m.d. of Waterstones, and founder of the independent book chain Daunt Books, remains unconvinced about the benefits of using the platform. He told The Bookseller: “From the perspective of an independent bookseller, I would be very reluctant to hand over my customers—and indeed didn’t. If you’re not doing anything with those customers then of course that makes sense, because something is better than nothing, but you are giving your customers away and you’re not getting much for them. 

"You can affiliate with anybody, but obviously if you’re an independent bookseller you would rather keep your customer and sell them the books rather than get a very small percentage from somebody else doing so. To represent it as something that saves you as an independent bookseller I find fairly curious... it simply doesn’t work unless you’re very small. I think, perhaps, if you’re a slightly larger independent bookseller you’d be much better off keeping your own customers and selling books to them.” 

Kieron Smith, digital director of Blackwell's also expressed concerns at last year’s launch, but says he feels “very positive” about the way indies have stepped up to engage with new technology and social media to "create new conversations" and grow sales.  

He told The Bookseller: “As I commented last year, I’m sure that Bookshop.org will be good for some booksellers. It also remains true that buying, engaging and interacting direct with booksellers, through whatever medium, is still best for customers. I think there were fears that many booksellers could not develop their own sites, social media and online presence—this was an underestimation of the bookselling community. It also makes me feel very positive about the future as booksellers engage with technology to ensure that they reach as many book buyers as they can wherever they are.” 

Responding to the criticisms, Vanderbilt said Bookshop.org does share customer data, GDPR permitting, if a customer has bought from a bookshop on the website and opts-in for that data to be shared. “That customer data is available to the bookshop and many do use that to expand their email newsletter, for example... they get the same data that they would from their own website,” she said. 

She also stressed that different booksellers use the website in different ways. “We have some bookshops who are daily tweeting and sharing things and we are an integral part of the links in their newsletter, we are part of the DNA of their business now. And then we have other bookshops that just come online and set up an account and they don’t make much in the way of commission, but they participate in the bookshop pool. Either of those is fine. We respect those choices of how people want to use the platform but we really encourage anyone [running a bookshop] to set up an account because you will get a share of the pool and the income.” 

Vanderbilt added: “The other criticism that we had in the past was whether or not this would be incremental; in other words, were we just taking business away [by selling to consumers who] would otherwise go into a shop, who would otherwise buy direct from a bookshop? There’s a lot of broader data that points to that not being the case. We have had a very good year, as have quite a lot of independent bookshops, and the number of independent bookshops is going up. There is pretty strong evidence, to my mind, that we have grown the pie rather than gotten in the way of the independent sector. I think those are some of the important things that have won people over—they have seen the early experience that the bookshops had.” 

Looking ahead to the future, she said Bookshop.org will “probably pause” its expansion for now after launching in Spain this year. “The thing with a web business is we can make lots of improvements on the platform generally and then be in a better position to go to new countries after that,” Vanderbilt said.  

However, she stressed that online book buying is only increasing. "I guess my message to the industry and to readers is, we’ve had a really good start and we’re incredibly grateful but there’s still a long way to go. We have very big ambitions for helping to grow the share of markets for the indies."

She said the bookshop.org team wants to continue working with the industry to help tackle Amazon's market position, adding: "Too often authors and publishers are still racing to Amazon as the default for pre-orders and for online sales. We have made good progress with that but there is still a huge amount of opportunity out there for us to get more of that action into the hands of the indies."