Starting in March, the American Booksellers Association will stop pointing to its own IndieBound store for book purchases and instead link to Bookshop. ABA has been a partner of Bookshop since its launch in January 2020 and financially benefits from its sales. In an announcement, the ABA says this change will “help eliminate consumer confusion, improve data for the indie channel, convert more consumers, generate more revenue for booksellers (thanks to a simpler purchase flow and higher conversion rate), and optimize the impact of Bookshop for independent bookstores.”
The ABA also notes, “Many stores credit Bookshop.org with their survival during the pandemic, and Bookshop.org was a key factor in the profitability of many stores in 2021, accounting for +0.9 percent of the average 2.4 percent net profit per store in 2021. … Bookshop.org now has over two million customers and, according to Bookshop.org’s customer research, 78 percent of them used to buy their books from Amazon when they shopped online and now support the indie channel via Bookshop. … Bookshop estimates this change could generate up to 15x more revenue for booksellers compared to their current revenue from IndieBound.”
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
