Here's some good news for people who are wide with either ebooks or print books: Bookshop.org has started new cooperations with TWO platforms.
What is Bookshop.org?
If you choose expanded distribution for print on KDP, or have your print books available via Ingram, or Draft2Digital (D2D), then your book will be listed with Bookshop. It is indeed a good alternative for Amazon and whichever indie shop's storefront you order from, they'll get a small comission, too. It's a win-win situation. With the recent happenings, more people decide to find their next favourite book there, instead of Amazon.
They currently only operate in the US and in the UK. But we're indies. We're international. So even if you're outside these two countries, this is still a good opportunity to reach readers there.
Let's about the ebooks first:
Last year, Bookshop announced that ebooks will be available on their website. At that time, only traditionally books were able to reach this platform. However, good news for indie authors arrived just yesterday: D2D announced a partnership with Bookshop.org
What does this mean for us? If you're wide with your ebooks, you can now list them on Bookshop via D2D. The royalty rate is 60%.
The thing with D2D is, whenever they announce a new partner, next time you log in, there's a pop-up message offering you to enroll all your books to the new platform with just one click. Which is really handy, especially if you have a big catalogue.
And it also has its drawbacks, since now you can list KU-books for libraries only so you have to be careful those books aren't distributed to the new platform. It could be solved by adding an "my book is in KU, so distribute only to libraries" yes/no choice somewhere in the ebook set-up, so when a new platforms becomes available next time via D2D, D2D will know which books to distribute to the new storefront - and which books should just stay library only and save me us time and a little panicking 😅
Here's the official announcement: https://www.draft2digital.com/blog/bookshop-org-and-draft2digital-partner-enabling-independent-bookstores-to-profit-from-self-published-ebooks/
Spotify to offer print books - wait what???
You read that right. Spotify, which started as a music streaming service, then bought Findaway Voices, added audiobooks to their selection, then transformed Findaway into InAudio, has now stepped out from the digital world of audio into the print world. Not the ebooks, which are also digital, but print books.
With Bookshop.org.
The news came out just today, a day after the other partnership announcement. The option will be available for US and UK users and Spotify has another new feature to offer: Page Match. You've heard of whispersync for Audible and Amazon, but this goes a step farther: you can not only match the place you were in your ebook and audiobook but also, with your physical copy!
It's something very exciting! But how do you match pages between your audiobook or hardcover? According to Spotify, it sounds quite simple, actually. You just need to use your camera to take a photo of the page you were reading, and the page match feature will find that spot in your audiobook.
Granted, would it find the first full sentence of that page? Or maybe somewhere mid-page? I have no idea, but it sounds (pun intended!) exciting. And it should work the other way, too, from audiobook to print book.
Here's the official announcement: https://newsroom.spotify.com/2026-02-05/bookshop-partnership-page-match-announcement/
Happy publishing!
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