You Have Alternatives

Buy books online AND support bookstores

Recently several people asked if my books were available anywhere besides Amazon. That surprised me.

Actually, it shouldn’t have surprised me that they didn’t automatically run to their local bookstore to see if that store would order the book. In fact, for a variety of reasons, indie bookstores don’t carry (and can’t order) most self-published books. Many books these days are self-published—even if mine aren’t—so people may have changed their book-buying habits accordingly.

What did surprise me, however, was that more people don’t know about Bookshop.org.

Which is why the reason for this post. Let me tell you about Bookshop.org. It was founded six years ago as an alternative to Amazon for socially conscious readers and has rapidly expanded since then.

Their model is unique. Here’s how it works:

• You select a bookstore you want to support on the Bookshop.org website. It could be your local brick-and-mortar store or another store.

• Then you buy your book(s), which are mailed to you.

• The bookstore you selected receives a profit from the sale, much as they would if you had walked into their store and bought the book.

Bookshop.org has a banner that shows the running total of how much money they have raised for local businesses. Right now, it’s north of $42 million.

I know many people who are boycotting Amazon. I also know others who aren’t interested in doing that. The first group feel so frustrated with the current state of affairs that they’re willing to take any action they think might make a difference as well as make them feel better. The other group probably dislike Amazon and all it stands for just as much as the first group, but either they don’t believe a boycott will be effective or they fear it will harm authors more than it will hurt Amazon.

The purpose of this post is not to take sides with either camp. Because here’s the thing: if you buy through Bookshop.org, you are both taking sales away from the behemoth and supporting authors and indie bookstores. Win-win-win.

So I’m hoping you’ve got books on your wish list or on your gifting to list this season. And now you know, if you didn’t before, that you have alternatives.

This LINK goes to my author page on Bookshop.org, but you can use it to navigate to any author or book.