Bookshop.org debuted its long-anticipated e-book platform on January 28, allowing independent bookstores to sell e-books directly to customers. The new e-book platform is available through native apps for Android and iOS, as well as a web browser reader.
The bookselling e-tailer, which offers a profit-sharing model to its independent bookstore partners, reported $44 million in revenue and distributed nearly $7 million to independent bookstores in 2024. It hopes to improve on those numbers this year through e-book sales, which founder and CEO Andy Hunter believes could be a significant new revenue stream for indies.
“Independent bookstores are working with margins of maybe 2% in a good year,” Hunter said. “E-books are 10–15% of the book market. If e-books could even be five percent of independent bookstore revenues—if we can just do half as well as the market—it would be a total game changer.”
The platform launches with content available from all the major publishers, with plans to onboard Draft2Digital's self-published titles this spring. Independent bookstores will be able to integrate e-book sales directly into their websites starting around April. Sales made directly through a bookstore’s own site, rather than a store’s Bookshop.org affiliate page, will return 100% of the profits back to the bookstore.
Until that time, bookstores will be compensated according to Bookshop’s traditional arrangement. Purchases made on the Bookshop.org affiliate page will see 30% of the sale price of e-books return to that bookstore; 10% of sales without a specified bricks-and-mortar outlet will be distributed among all participating bookstores on the platform.
Due to App Store restrictions requiring 30% of revenue from in-app purchases, customers will need to purchase e-books through Bookshop.org's website before reading them in the app. But Hunter emphasized that e-book prices will be consistent across all retailers. “The challenges that Bookshop faces with physical books is that they're cheaper on Amazon most of the time,” he said. “Well, e-books are not going to be cheaper on Amazon.”
Hunter explained that Bookshop plans to differentiate itself from its competition through social sharing features. “When I say that we want to bring e-books into the social discourse, we want to make it really easy to share content from an e-book and for another person to just click and start reading immediately.”
Bookshop.org reported a strong early 2025 performance, with January sales up 20% year-over-year to date, and since its launch, it has raised $35.8 million for partner stores through its profit-sharing model. The bookseller now works with more than 2,200 U.S. bookstores—accounting for approximately 85% of ABA members—and 500 stores in the U.K..
While the initial launch will offer what Hunter calls a “minimum viable product,” the platform has “a long list of improvements” planned, including enhanced social sharing capabilities and broader integration with bookstore websites. The U.K. e-book platform is expected to launch this summer.
“We want to be the best place to buy a book online for people who love books,” Hunter said. “We don't want to just give seven million dollars to bookstores every year. We want to give $20 million to bookstores. We want to give $30 million to bookstores.”