Bookshop.org was launched in 2020 as a way for local bookstores to compete nationally against top names such as Barnes & Noble and Amazon. The outlet lets independent bookstores — even those without websites — set up a storefront on Bookshop.org, creating curated lists and themed pages. Readers could then visit these virtual bookstores and select one as their preferred shop. The idea was to bring local bookstore charm to the generic experiences available through larger services, and it has been called a lifeline for small shops. Now the company is adding ebooks with a reader app for Android, iOS and the Web.

As it does with physical books, Bookshop.org will prompt ebook shoppers to designate a local book store at checkout, then send that store part of the purchase price, explains Engadget, noting that since it started selling physical books in late 2020, “Bookshop.org has funneled more than $35 million to indie booksellers.”

“Part of surviving the digital age is selling digital products. If Amazon can do it, your local bookstore should be able to do it,” Bookshop.org founder and CEO Andy Hunter tells The Verge, which couches the indie advocate’s big digital push as a sea change.

“Hunter blames Amazon for the fact that ebooks aren’t better, more popular, or more lucrative for bookstores,” The Verge writes, explaining that the e-retailer’s legacy contracts with booksellers favor physical volumes because they were forged at a time when publishers feared the digital revolution as a threat to their traditional business.

Amazon agreed to use digital rights management (DRM) to thwart piracy, which The Verge says “mostly worked, but it made Amazon too important and left ebook innovation to die.”

In its announcement, Bookshop.org claims “25 percent of readers in the U.S. prefer ebooks, yet up until now they had no way to buy them from their local bookstore.”

With Bookshop.org’s digital expansion, boutique book stores will no longer be stuck saying “come to us for your books, but when you need an ebook, go to Amazon,” Hunter tells Engadget.

Bookshop.org’s digital reader app will have roughly one million titles at launch, with many more to come and plans to soon add self-publishing authors.

“Competing with Amazon won’t be easy, but ebooks might actually be a more level playing field than most,” The Verge suggests, noting Amazon “doesn’t have a huge advantage in shipping times or logistics when all you’re doing is downloading a file.”