Amazon is raising eyebrows with the timing of its big book sale for 2025, which runs from April 23 to 28 — which means it’s competing directly with Independent Bookstore Day.
As writer Maris Kreisman explained in Lit Hub, Independent Bookstore Day is an annual event organized by the American Booksellers Association (ABA), with events, special guests, and exclusive merchandise at 1,600 participating bookstores. And this year, it’s taking place on April 26 (today).
“I implore you: if you live near an indie bookstore (and I know that many of us still don’t and I hope one day we all do), you must go,” Kreizman said.
Indie bookstores do appear to be on the upswing in the United States, at least according to last year’s numbers from the ABA. But of course, Amazon remains dominant — in 2020, a House committee estimated that the company controlled more than 50% of the total online and offline print book market, and it’s even more dominant in e-books.
So it’s not exactly a good look for the company to time its big sale to compete with a nationwide, celebratory bookstore event.
In fact, Bookshop.org — an Amazon competitor that partners with indie bookstores — emailed customers with a note from CEO Andy Hunter describing Amazon’s sale as “a calculated move by a company that has already put half the bookstores in the country out of business, controls over 60% of the market and sells far more books than all indie bookstores combined.”
“The people at Amazon responsible for the timing of their ‘Book Sale’ should be ashamed, but they are shameless,” Hunter said.
Amazon, however, released a statement describing the timing overlap as “unintentional”: “The dates for our sale were set this year to accommodate additional participating countries.”
Given the company’s scale, it’s certainly possible that Independent Bookstore Day barely registered with the people scheduling the sale. Even so, ABA CEO Allison Hill told Vulture, “At best it’s insensitive and at worst it seems like a tactic to hurt small businesses.”