Would you like to know how to save your local bookstore? Our indie bookstores are in big trouble, due to the dominance of Amazon, which can afford to massively discount books below the RRP. However, it’s only a book, so just get a loyalty card from your indie bookstore, and pay a few extra quid. The price of having to buy everything from Amazon and Tesco is too high.
Bookindy is a free app to download. Browse on Amazon. Find a book, then get free delivery to your indie bookstore. It uses the technology of Amazon – to support your indie bookstore instead! If you shop online, Blackwell’s is good as is Bookshop (recently launched in both the UK and US). If you’re a blogger, both companies run affiliate programs, if you use book sales for site income.
Books to Buy at Indie Bookstores
- Bookshop Tours of Britain is a slow-travel guide around the nation, from bookshop to bookshop. Take 18 bookshop tours, visiting beaches, castles, coal mines, whiskey distilleries along the way, with a bit of bird-watching, hiking and canoeing thrown in. The book journeys from the Jurassic Coast, over the mountains of Wales, through England’s industrial heartland, up to the Scottish Highlands and back down through the Norfolk Broads and into London.
- The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap is a nice autobiography of a couple in the US (one originally from Scotland) who just as the Amazon Kindle was taking off, decided to do something pretty scary: take off to the mountains, and set up a second-hand bookstore. Knowing nothing about running a bookstore, all they had was themselves, their animals and a real love of books. Everything thought they were mad. But not only did they succeed, but they created something else: a community.
- How to Resist Amazon (and Why) is by the owner of a US indie bookstore, and is an open letter to Jeff Bezos, asking people to join his peaceful process to take back power from a giant: ‘Small business owners are led to believe that if their idea is good enough, they can grow their business and create more jobs. Maybe we can talk about it over pie and coffee at Ladybird Diner across the street, my treat. I’d love to show around a vibrant community anchored by small businesses, here on earth;
- Seven Types of People You Find in Bookshops is by a Scottish indie bookseller who details his 20 years of people-watching. If you’re a lover of the eccentric and think that Amazon’s domination is making everybody sad, this is the book for you. Step inside to meet the crafty Antiquarian, the shy and retiring book browser and the gormless (yet strangely likeable) shop assistant Hugo. The author spends his free time shooting Amazon Kindles in the wild!