This article is more than 1 year old
Booksellers club calls in Kobo to aid indies
Small shops to get e-stores
Britain's Booksellers Association (BA) has hopped into bed with Japanese-owned Canadian e-book company Kobo in a bid to help the UK's independent bookshops fight back against Amazon.
Kobo already operates in the UK through a partnership with newsagent WH Smith. The deal with the BA will allow the trade organisation's 3000-odd members, a third of who are indies, to present Kobo's e-book store as their own. They will be able to sell e-books directly to their customers online, sharing sales revenue with Kobo.
BA members' share of the proceeds of each sale was not disclosed.
Still, it comes at a time when booksellers, independent ones in particular, are struggling. While e-book sales are rocketing, physical sales are down, the Publishers Association revealed today. Digital offerings have a long way to go to match the revenue generated by sales of dead tree books, but it's never been harder for small shops to compete with bulk-buying, discount-driven rivals like Amazon.
In August, Kobo struck up a similar deal with the American Booksellers Association, which numbers 2000 independent sellers among its members.
Kobo sells e-books in the ePub format. In addition to its own shopfront, it operates branded online bookshops on behalf of 14,000 booksellers in 12 countries, it claimed. ®
Biting the hand that feeds IT
