quick note on book-buying in the UK

[kaberett]

I got linked the other day to Bookshop.org, as a way to shop for books online while supporting independent booksellers in the UK -- to which my immediate question was "wait, how is this different from, and is it better than, hive.co.uk?"

And then, with a little more prompting, I managed to do some digging through the website, and found:

If you want to choose a specific bookshop to support, choose them from our map and they’ll receive 30% of the cover price (or almost all of the profit) on your orders for a year. Otherwise, 10% of the cover price of your order will contribute to an earnings pool that will be evenly distributed among participating independent bookshops each month. (https://uk.bookshop.org/pages/about)

... versus...

Whether you order books, films, music, games, or anything else, your chosen bookshop will receive commission. They will receive a minimum of 10% on the net value of all book orders, rising to 25% when you select store collection. We pay 8% on eBooks and 3% on entertainment products. Bookshops receive their commission monthly. (https://www.hive.co.uk/WhatsHiveallabout)

The other really crucial point from my perspective is that Bookshop.org isn't currently doing ebooks, but I'd been completely unaware of them otherwise, so here is a note. :)

Comments

[sporky_rat]

...is hive able to do ebooks to us americans?

[momijizukamori]

This was also my question so I went to look and

Please note: eBooks can only be purchased with a UK issued credit card and all our eBooks (ePub and PDF) are DRM protected.

...so no. Though I have bought directly from small UK publishers (Tilted Axis, specifically), which at least means more of the money going to the people making the books.

[shanaqui]

Portal Bookshop actively point people toward Bookshop.org as a good place to order and benefit them, when a given book isn't on their website! (IIRC Hive would not add Portal, or at least had not when Bookshop.org started operating in the UK. Don't know if that ever got resolved.)