Bookshop.org, an online retailer which supports independent bookshops through profit sharing, has launched a second-hand book buy-back scheme for readers. ‘Bookloop’ will allow customers to trade books they own and no longer want for credit to use on the online retailer’s website.
By registering books via the online valuation system run by ‘Zeercle’, customers can earn credit to use on new books from Bookshop.org once their parcel has been received and checked. Readers will need to sell at least £5 worth of books (and some may be rejected if their value is too low or the system already has too many copies), and then they simply need to take the package to a DPD drop-off point or arrange a collection from home.
The second-hand books will not, however, be sold on Bookshop.org itself, as they continue to stock only new titles. Instead, they will be traded on other online marketplaces by Zeercle; a company that also operates the WH Smith buy-back scheme launched late last year. Unlike the W H Smith service though, books sold by Bookshop.org customers will not be sold on Amazon-owned websites, in keeping with Bookshop.org’s ethos as an alternative to Amazon. Accumulated royalties on the books will also be distributed to authors via a shared author fund called ‘the Drusilla Harvey Access Fund’ arranged with the Society of Authors (SoA) and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society which offers grants to authors to cover needs such as travel costs, childcare, and more.
Mark Thornton, senior partnerships manager for Bookshop.org said: “We’re always saying the best way to support bookshops is in person. But on the other side of that, the inexorable rise of online book purchases means we have to find new ways of looping all of these things together, so that we’re all in this shared endeavour of supporting a really positive reading culture, with independent bookshops at its heart.”
Second-hand booksellers have voiced concerns regarding how many books will be sold to new readers through the Bookloop scheme.
“Of all the second-hand books we are offered less than 50% are worth purchasing,” said Patrick Kelly, owner of Bookmongers in Brixton, “Most second-hand books should be recycled. They are either no longer relevant, overly produced or are left in bad condition.”
Bookshop.org, however, countered that only 2% of books sold to Zeercle go unsold. Most of the excess books are donated to local charities, with less than 0.5% recycled.
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