There’s nothing we like more at eatbigfish than a David vs Goliath story. And with Jeff Bezos becoming the first-ever person to amass a reported $200bn fortune, during a global health crisis and the worst economic downturn since the great depression - there is no greater Goliath than Amazon.

Self-described “scrappy band of passionate believers” Bookshop launched in the UK in November 2020 — just in time for the Christmas rush. Following the ‘People’s Champion’ narrative to the letter, Bookshop is an online platform designed to ‘support local bookshops’, aiming to offer the convenience of Amazon while financially supporting the much-loved local bookshops on our high streets.

Bookshop’s model is a simple one. Customers can search for their local bookshop and order through them directly, so they receive the profit from the order. Or, customers can browse and order without selecting a specific bookshop, and the profit from the order goes into an earnings pool which is distributed evenly to independent bookshops across the country. Bookshop also has an affiliate scheme, so any book-loving Instagrammer, organisation or book club can set up a page on the site and get a 10% commission from each sale created. 

What is Bookshop challenging? The tradeoff between online convenience and impersonal transactions. Nicole Vanderbilt, MD at Bookshop UK, told The Challenger Project; “Bookshop.org was founded to challenge the very notion that spending online has to come at the expense of small businesses and your local community. We believe that the only way to compete with a global conglomerate is to offer something different. We aren’t competing with other online players by trying to be as cheap or as fast, but by offering consumers a socially conscious alternative for online book buying with a similar level of convenience and service that customers have come to expect from online shopping.”

Nobody roots for Goliath, so Bookshop’s launch was anticipated to be warmly welcomed in the UK. Still, the sheer volume of positive posts and promotion on social media by the publishing industry, authors and readers alike, was impossible to ignore - resulting in book sales of £65,000 on its first day without any conventional media spend at all. In the US, where they have been operating since January 2020, sales have steadily grown to a peak in June of over $1m of book sales in one day.

“Being an independent bookseller has for so many years been such a David v Goliath battle that it feels slightly disconcerting when someone at last hands you a bazooka instead of you peppering away with your slingshot”, Andy Rossiter of Rossiter Books in Ross-on-Wyesaid told The Guardian.

So far so brilliant - Goliath slaying bazookas for everyone.

It’s not all plain sailing though. However well-intentioned Bookshop is, there’s been some criticism of its model. A leaked letter reported in The Bookseller suggested some ‘discontent’ in the industry with some booksellers raising concerns that they might lose out financially if customers buy through Bookshop’s platform. Questions have also been raised of the fairness and transparency of its affiliate scheme. Others suggest that Bookshop may be preaching to the converted - that ‘ethical’ consumers, most likely to shop directly with their local book shop, will be attracted by Bookshop’s convenience and values-based messaging - resulting in it stealing share from the very people it has set out to help, rather than the big bad enemy. 

Bookshop CEO Andy Hunter has responded to the critics by stressing their challenger credentials. “We really are what we say we are,” he told the New Statesman. “We’re a mission-based organisation, we’re very scrappy, we’re a small team, we’re all working from home, and we’re doing the best we can with our resources to push for a sea-change in consumer behaviour that protects independent bookstores.”

We can expect retail to be disrupted even further this year and our local high streets threatened for some time to come, but Bookshop is one of the challengers leading the charge in its defence. We asked Vanderbilt what we can expect to see from them in 2021;

“This year, we will continue to focus on our mission: supporting indie bookshops. This means we will continue to champion customers going directly to bookshops when they can and coming to us when they can’t. We want to continue to improve the experience for customers and for bookshops, so we plan to launch things like accepting National Book Tokens and a streamlined checkout experience.” 

Perhaps in 2021, we finally have a challenger in Bookshop that can turn a page on Amazon’s global domination. (On book sales at least!)

Helen Redstone is Strategy & Business Development Director at eatbigfish.