Around 200 local bookshops now have their books discoverable via an emerging industry platform that has a range of books to “rival what Booktopia had”, according to its founder.
YourBookstore.io was launched in June 2023, but the venture has attracted more attention since Australia’s dominant online bookseller Booktopia fell into voluntary administration earlier this month.
Booktopia had been a key sales channel for local Australian authors, some of whom took to social media following its collapse to share a link to their books on YourBookstore.io.
The site acts as a portal that connects shoppers with local, often independently owned bookshops in Australia and New Zealand. Visitors can search for the book they wish to buy and find the bookstore closest to them that has it in stock.
And while the site features an ‘add to cart’ button, YourBookstore.io does not hold the inventory or make the sale; instead, shoppers are transferred to their chosen bookstore’s website to complete the sale.
The commission-free site was founded by Warwick Schaffer, who is also the founder of New Zealand-based CirclePOS.com, which provides inventory software for bookshops and owns YourBookstore.io.
Speaking to SmartCompany, Schaffer described the portal as “more a gift to the community than a business in itself”.
“There are no fees and we want to keep it this way,” he says.
The site’s development has been funded by the bookshops that use the CirclePOS system and it represents an “additional useful service” for those businesses, adds Schaffer.
At this stage, all the bookstores listed on YourBookstore.io are CirclePOS customers, but this may change over time as there are APIs available that allow other systems to also use the system. The platform is also available to bookselling industry associations, such as BookHub in New Zealand, which uses multiple inventory management systems.
YourBookstore.io’s origin story is a humble one.
“You might laugh at this but initially it was just us wanting to find books,” Schaffer recalls.
“We wanted to buy local and support the shops that support us, but even for us it was hard to go from shop website to shop website to find who had a particular title.”
However, the dominance of global retailers like Amazon over the bookselling industry was also a motivating factor.
“We could see that it [YourBookstore.io] was the missing piece of the puzzle needed by local bookstores to foot it against central giants,” Schaffer adds.
“It gives the public a single central place where they can find almost any book they can imagine and then the store closest to them that has it.”
With some 300,000 titles available now on shelves in bookstores listed on YourBookstore.io, Schaffer believes the range “would rival what Booktopia had”.
“But more importantly, the range is very broad,” he explains.
“Local bookstores can be quite eclectic so there are titles you would never find anywhere else, plus they have hand-picked these titles so the store that has your book will probably have others you will like.”
The feedback from booksellers has been “amazing”, says Schaffer, as it gives them the ability to also help customers track down books they don’t stock themselves.
“Just today, Tim Jarvis from Fullers in Hobart told me a story of a guy that came especially down to his store, talking about rumours of a site where you could find which store had a book,” says Schaffer.
“They wanted a difficult-to-find out-of-print title and sure enough, found it in another store on the site. The customer was amazed and extremely grateful”.
Similarly, local authors and publishers are adding referral links to YourBookstore.io to their own websites. Penguin Australia and Affirm Press are among the publishers to do so, while authors including Andrew McDonald, Bri Lee, Charlotte Wood and Sally Murphy are among those also directing potential customers to the site.
In total, YourBookstore.io is seeing referrals from around 40 authors, says Schaffer.
“This has been very much a word-of-mouth thing,” says Schaffer.
“We are just software developers, so we develop the site, but rely on the community of publishers, authors, shops and associations to get the word out. It is a genuine community effort.”
“We want to take some market share back from the central giants and give it to local bookstores,” he adds, when asked about the long-term goal for YourBookstore.io.
“We want it to be the first place people looking for a book go.”
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Editor
Eloise is an experienced business journalist and editor, who has held senior editorial roles at SmartCompany since 2014. Prior to joining SmartCompany, Eloise was news editor at Books+Publishing, the trade press for the Australian book industry. Eloise has degrees in media and communications, marketing and business management, and political science. You can follow her on LinkedIn, and Twitter at @ellykeating.
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