![]() ![]() “Indie bookstores across the country are obviously struggling. Although these efforts can provide necessary financial padding for endangered shops, adapting to the new sales landscape is also crucial. And Bookshop’s fundraising arm, which gives a portion of its profits to indie bookstores who sign up, has raised north of $900,000. Other fundraising attempts are trying to revive the indie community writ large the American Booksellers Association partnered with the Book Industry Charitable Foundation, Reese’s Book Club, and author James Patterson for the #SaveIndieBookstores campaign, raising more than $750,000. Some have turned to crowdfunding as a temporary fix, including San Francisco’s famous City Lights Bookstore and Oakland’s beloved Marcus Books, the oldest black bookstore in the country. Meanwhile, many independent bookstores are hurting. ![]() (Through a spokesperson, Amazon declined to comment on its sales.) “Amazon's market share by default, we estimate, will grow to at least 70 percent of the market on the basis of the month of April, up from just over 50 percent in the pre-Covid period,” Hildick-Smith says. While Amazon designated books as “non-essential” items, thus elongating shipping times, its vast selection and reputation for consistency have kept its position strong. While the pandemic caused a spike in interest in Bookshop, buyers have also been flocking to Amazon, which was already the dominant force in bookselling. It’s not all rosy-in fact, it’s a dire time for a large portion of treasured indie shops, as these book sales are not getting equally distributed. The sense is that it might just have been a holiday blip,” Hildrick-Smith says he says he expects the data for after Easter to become available soon, but until then it’s hard to make a strong assertion about the state of the marketplace. “Ebooks are up, audiobooks are up, hardcover was up through the Easter holidays, books for children, books for gifts. “Those books that everybody is supposed to have read but perhaps hasn’t.” “Fat ones are selling more than thin ones,” Daunt says. CEO James Daunt says that people are also gravitating toward well-regarded novels, both contemporary favorites and canonical books. Barnes & Noble has seen this large increase in educational and children’s books. NPD found that “juvenile” book sales have been up 80 percent since the beginning of March. In addition to homemaking books, children’s educational books are in high demand, as parents have moved en masse to homeschooling. ![]()
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