Amazon is frowning at the timing of the 2025 big book sale, which will take place from April 23rd to 28th. In other words, it competes directly with independent bookstore days.
As author Maris Kreisman explained in LIT Hub, Independent Bookstore Day is an annual event hosted by the American Bookstore Association (ABA), with events, special guests and exclusive products at 1,600 participating bookstores. And this year, it will be held today on April 26th.
“I beg you. If you live near an indie bookstore (and many of us know that’s not yet, and we all hope that we all have to do), you have to go,” Kreisman said.
At least figures from last year’s ABA show that indie bookstores are on the rise in the US. But of course, Amazon is still dominant. In 2020, a House committee estimated that the company controls more than 50% of the online and offline printed book market, and is even more dominant in e-books.
So it’s not bad at all for a company to make big sales to compete with national celebration bookstore events.
In fact, Bookshop.org, an Amazon competitor that partners with Indie Bookstores, emailed customers from Andy Hunter, who describes Amazon sales as “a calculated move by a company that has already gone out of business with half of the domestic bookstores, selling over 60% of the market, and selling far more books than the Indie Bookstores combined.”
“The people who are in charge of timing Amazon’s ‘book sales’ are shameful, but they’re shameless,” Hunter said.
However, Amazon has issued a statement describing overlapping timing as “unintentional.” “Our sales dates were set this year to accommodate additional participating countries.”
Given the size of the company, it is certainly possible that independent bookstore day has barely signed up with people scheduling sales. Still, ABA CEO Allison Hill told Vulture: