There’s nothing better than whiling away a couple of hours in a decent independent bookshop, ideally one that also doubles as a cafe.
In Wellington, Unity Books is my go-to destination for new books, and I usually make a beeline for the history section in the middle of the store. For secondhand books, I visit to Arty Bees, or Pegasus Books and it’s rare for me to leave without some out-of-print title in my bag.
It’s the same when I travel - I’ll avoid the high street retailers and look for the local indie bookshops, which are the best curators of literature and also beacons of culture in their local communities, offering author signings and talks.
In New Zealand, our indie bookshops proudly shine a light on New Zealand literature. At Unity Books, the local authors’ section is one of the first you encounter on walking through the front door.
I spend hundreds of dollars a year at indie bookstores, but for too long I’ve also guiltily given hundreds more to Amazon, the galactic empire that casts its shadow over Aotearoa’s rebel alliance of indie bookstores all the way from its headquarters in Seattle, Washington.
Every month, I shell out about $25 on an Audible subscription, allowing me to download one new audio book, and choose from a selection of others bundled in with the sub. To be fair, other than the library-run eBook lending schemes, there isn’t really a local match for Audible.
Buying books offshore
Until last year, I also regularly bought books via the superb UK-based website Bookdepository.co.uk. The website had an incredible selection of books, at sharp prices, and offered free shipping to New Zealand. Unfortunately, Amazon bought Book Depository in 2011. Its ardent fans expected it to be shut down, but Book Depository survived more than a decade to finally get the chop last year when Amazon made deep cuts across its business.
Bookdepository’s demise is probably a good thing for our local indie bookstores. A 2021 study commissioned by the book-promoting, not-for-profit Read NZ, found that 35% of New Zealanders bought their books online from overseas websites.
Booksellers, the local association of independent booksellers, which has been around since 1921, is trying to claw back some of that business going offshore, by building a stronger e-commerce presence for its network of booksellers.
About six months ago it launched Bookhub, an online shop window into about 70 bookstores around the country. It features a live inventory of all books for sale in those stores. For instance, searching for John Mulgan’s Man Alone, my favourite New Zealand novel, produced 89 copies across 21 bookstores, each priced at $16.
I was then presented with an “add to cart” button alongside each bookseller, allowing me to click through to its site to complete the transaction. This is the big difference between Bookhub and other popular online bookstores, including Amazon, Fishpond, and Booktopia.
Bookhub doesn’t take care of all the backend order processing but passes on the transaction to the local bookstore you choose to buy from. It means that shipping times and pricing, as well as the customer experience, will vary depending on the bookstore you choose.
Prices may not be as cheap as those larger online bookstores.
“We’re never going to be able to compete on price with the likes of Amazon, which intentionally often sells at less than we can even buy the books wholesale from our publishers,” says Renee Rowland, Booksellers Association manager, and until recently, the owner of two bookstores, The Twizel Bookshop and Timaru Booksellers.
“Aside from Jeff Bezos, I don’t know many booksellers who are doing it for the money. They’re doing it for the love of it,” adds Rowland.
Bookhub prices compared
With fixed margins offered by publishers, Bookhub may not be the cheapest option for online book purchases. Still, for New Zealand titles, in particular, I found it to be quite competitive.
A search for the standard 2002 Penguin edition of Man Alone finds it costs $30 plus $6 shipping ($36) from Unity Books, which has two copies in stock, a fact I learned by searching for it on Bookhub.
Fishpond.co.nz, the local online store which was bought last year by Australia e-commerce behemoth Kogan, charges $23.93 for Man Alone plus $4.99 for shipping it from Australia, so a total of $28.93. But it won’t be shipping until at least May 2.
Amazon’s Australian store has Man Alone at $26.08 plus $8.38 for shipping ($34.46 total) but it is currently out of stock.
“We’ll notify you via email when we have an estimated delivery date for this item,” I was told.
Bookhub members are also stocking the new Penguin Classics edition of Man Alone, with 80 copies available across indie bookstores priced at $16 - a sharp deal. The Penguin Classics edition isn’t listed on Amazon, but Fishpond has it.
How about a new release like Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario, the sort of geeky non-fiction book I’d have once bought from Bookdepository.co.uk?
Bookhub retailers have it for $40. Unity didn’t have it in stock when I checked, but Almo Books in Carterton did. Unfortunately, its website was down, so I went to Bruce McKenzie Booksellers in Palmerston North for $47.99, delivered. North Island delivery is typically 2-3 days.
Amazon was $59.04 including delivery, but delivery is not expected until May 10 and Fishpond was $57.14, delivery from May 13.
So Bookhub pricing compared favourably in those searches. But Rowland says pricing isn’t its big selling point. The connection with local booksellers who are passionate about literature is the big difference from the monolithic stores like Amazon.
“You’re going to get exceptional service, you’re going to get local service. You’re going to get someone there on the phone you can talk with straightaway,” she says. “With Amazon, you get into the labyrinth of, how do I find my parcel? How do I get a refund? How do I even talk to someone on the end of the phone?”
Bookhub lacks the seamless experience of an Amazon or Fishpond, where the add to cart and checkout processes are handled in one place. Other indie book collectives around the world have taken different approaches. The US-based bookshop.org, and Libris.nl, which is backed by indies in the Netherlands, both have their own ecommerce engines routing orders to local bookstores behind the scenes.
Boosting sales
Rowland says Bookhub’s approach accounts for the wide range of e-commerce systems employed by New Zealand bookstores. Christchurch-based Circlesoft, a bibliographic inventory and point of sale software developer, created the Bookhub system for aggregating store inventories, and also supplies software to bookstores directly.
Bookhub.co.nz receives about 15,000 unique visitors per month, says Rowland, and 1200 books are added to the cart each month. Because individual bookstores complete the transaction, it’s hard to know exactly how many of those 1200 transactions are completed.
“Anecdotal feedback from our members on the site is that they’re seeing an increase of between 30% and 100% on their online sales,” says Rowland. “One bookstore in particular went from doing maybe two online sales a week to 15 a day.”
The big task for Bookhub now is boosting awareness that it exists, a difficult task when deep-pocketed competitors have large budgets for search engine and social media marketing.
“We need to get that 35% that are going online and shopping offshore. So, it’s marketing, it’s advertising. We definitely need to spend more and we want to spend more,” says Rowland, who is Booksellers’ sole full time employee, backed by a volunteer board of bookstore operators.
Vouchers to go digital
Booksellers hopes to upgrade its long-established book voucher scheme for the digital era, so it can be used for online purchases via Bookhub, and there’s and appetite for including secondhand books, but not in the immediate future, as it’s more complicated.
“Customers want to know if it’s an ex-library, if it has any damage, if it is a first or second edition, whether it has been signed. It’s definitely on the vision board, but if we take on too much, we’ll mess it up,” Rowland says.
With the popularity of click and collect, in which customers pop into their local bookstore to pick up an online order, a Bookhub priority is to increase foot traffic to bookstores and entice them with in-store deals. Most indie bookstores that weren’t already online set up ecommerce operations during the pandemic and have become adept at handling online orders and queries.
“Trading conditions are tough,” admits Rowland. I don’t think bookstores are in any way immune to the economic implications. What they needed next was some way to centralise things online because online is so competitive. We can’t waste this opportunity, and we won’t.”
