Weird to think that Amazon started off primarily as an online bookstore before it became the platform where you could order drones, laptops, garden sheds, go-karts, meds, and Ritz crackers. And to think that people said it would never work.
While Amazon is holding one of its many Prime Days on October 7 and 8, Bookshop.org will be offering free shipping. The offer overlaps with their Banned Books Week Sale, which runs from October 5 to 19, during which you can get 20% off certain books by using the code BBW25.
indie book fever
After Barnes & Noble hollowed out much of the independent bookstore landscape in the US, Amazon came in to nearly finish the job. But what about those non-vanilla, exist-in-real-life bookstores? The independents?
Bookshop.org was founded in 2020 so that people could shop conveniently online, but receive their books from the very same indie bookstores threatened by the mega corporations.
I’ve reported on Bookshop.org before. It was only earlier this year, back in January, when Bookshop.org launched the ability for people to buy e-books directly from independent bookstores through its platform.
It was a way for people to funnel some of those sweet, badly needed dollars to the indie bookstores that make life in this dystopian funhouse worth living, rather than depositing them into some billionaire’s pocket.
There’s a donation counter on Bookshop.org’s home page that proudly displays, at the time of my writing this, $41,429,097.06 raised for local bookstores. Not bad at all for a site that only launched in 2020. Not bad for any site, actually.
Like the famous hamburger counter on the roadside signs of a certain fast food joint, toss a few bucks Bookshop.org’s way, get a few books in return, and know that the next time you see the counter at a higher number, that some of that was thanks to you.
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