Friday, June 05, 2015

New Bookindy app helps bookshops fight back against Amazon

Type in a book you’d like to read, and the app will compare the Amazon price with nearby independent book shops – in the hope you’ll go and buy there

The Bookindy app could boost trade for independent bookshops.
The Bookindy app could boost trade for independent bookshops. Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian
Independent booksellers have launched a new weapon in their two-pronged offensive against online retailers such as Amazon and the supermarket chains who pile books high and sell them low.
In a neat piece of entrepreneurial oneupmanship, the Bookindy app uses Amazon’s own technology to upstage it, answering its inventor’s question: “Can you promote local independent bookshops on the very system that’s designed to destroy them?”

The app is an extension for the Google Chrome browser which, when downloaded, changes slightly how the Amazon website looks when you open it up. Alongside the Amazon price, the Bookindy inserts a box showing you the cheapest price of that book from an independent shop – and how far that shop is from where you are standing.

Marketed with the tagline “browse Amazon, buy independent”, Bookindy gets its information from the online indie retailer Hive, which describes itself as the place “where the two worlds of online purchasing and high street shopping collide.” 

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