To that end, making a purchase via Bookindy, which in turn affiliate-links to Hive, gives you the option to pick up your book at your local bookstore or have it delivered Amazon-style to your home. It’s not competing head on, it’s about providing choice and a giving customers a gentle nudge,” he adds. So with Bookindy you simply browse Amazon and get the local option the buy. We demand something that gives us the choice of where to buy a book from with no extra effort. We demand something as convenient as Amazon. “If we are to buy from independent bookshops again, we’re not going to change our ways based on pangs of guilt or a sense of obligation. It’s not that Amazon is always cheaper (though a lot of best sellers are discounted) or that Amazon’s products are better (the books are the same), but Amazon has consolidated so many products and has become the one-stop shop for everything, the de facto.”Īnd while many of us who use Amazon are aware of the monopolistic effect the e-commerce behemoth is having, and have occasional pangs of guilt as a result, Cookson believes that the only way to help wean consumers off of their Amazon addiction is to make shopping at your local independent bookstore just as convenient. “There is no tech champion for local bookshops, individually they cannot compete with the likes of Amazon online. While this convenience culture sates our appetite to buy whatever we want, whenever we want, local businesses are losing out, and in the long run this is to the detriment of the local economy and community,” explains Bookindy founder William Cookson, who previously co-founded Believe.in, the charity fundraising platform that unfortunately deadpooled earlier this year. “For years, I’ve been buying more and more goods from Amazon, they’re convenient and trustworthy. that was set up to support local bookstores. Under the hood, the app is powered by Hive, an online independent retailer in the U.K. However, alongside Amazon’s own pricing, the price of the same book available from your local bookstore is displayed, with the option to also purchase locally. only and installable as a Chrome Extension, Bookindy hijacks Amazon to let you browse books on the e-commerce giant’s site as you normally would. Enter Bookindy, a clever new web app that aims to help your local independent bookstore fight back.Īvailable initially in the U.K.

But, in other ways, we pay a heavy price, not least with the erosion of the high street. It’s super convenient, competes aggressively on price, and has a gigantic inventory. Amazon quickly established itself as an online bookstore behemoth, before expanding into almost every facet of our e-commerce lives.

Amazon extension for chrome