The challenger brand to Amazon’s hegemony has big plans to build further, starting with a new e-book initiative. Andy Hunter decided something needed to be done about the endless rise of Amazon in 2018—the year that the e-commerce giant surpassed 50% of book sales in the U.

Bookshop.org launched in early 2020 and quickly became a lifeline for local bookstores that found themselves suddenly in need of a way to sell books online. The Bookshop model is a simple one: when you use the website,

The platform has made a profit while supporting brick-and-mortar bookstores. Next up, taking on Amazon’s 76 percent of the e-book market.

The company is initially launching apps on Android, iOS, and the web with dreams of someday creating an e-reader of its own.

"Everything Amazon can do, we want to do as well or better," says CEO Andy Hunter on boosting indie sales digitally