Amazon is elevating eyebrows with the timing of its huge e book sale for 2025, which runs from April 23 to twenty-eight — which suggests it’s competing immediately with Unbiased Bookstore Day.
As author Maris Kreisman defined in Lit Hub, Unbiased Bookstore Day is an annual occasion organized by the American Booksellers Affiliation (ABA), with occasions, particular company, and unique merchandise at 1,600 taking part bookstores. And this yr, it’s happening on April 26 (at present).
“I implore you: in case you stay close to an indie bookstore (and I do know that many people nonetheless don’t and I hope someday all of us do), you will need to go,” Kreizman mentioned.
Indie bookstores do look like on the upswing in america, not less than in line with final yr’s numbers from the ABA. However after all, Amazon stays dominant — in 2020, a Home committee estimated that the corporate managed greater than 50% of the overall on-line and offline print e book market, and it’s much more dominant in e-books.
So it’s not precisely a superb search for the corporate to time its huge sale to compete with a nationwide, celebratory bookstore occasion.
The truth is, Bookshop.org — an Amazon competitor that companions with indie bookstores — emailed prospects with a word from CEO Andy Hunter describing Amazon’s sale as “a calculated transfer by an organization that has already put half the bookstores within the nation out of enterprise, controls over 60% of the market and sells much more books than all indie bookstores mixed.”
“The individuals at Amazon chargeable for the timing of their ‘E-book Sale’ ought to be ashamed, however they’re shameless,” Hunter mentioned.
Amazon, nonetheless, launched an announcement describing the timing overlap as “unintentional”: “The dates for our sale had been set this yr to accommodate further taking part nations.”
Given the corporate’s scale, it’s actually doable that Unbiased Bookstore Day barely registered with the individuals scheduling the sale. Even so, ABA CEO Allison Hill informed Vulture, “At greatest it’s insensitive and at worst it looks as if a tactic to harm small companies.”
