Online shopping service Flubit.com are looking to disrupt Amazon’s dominance of the book market by dedicating the month of August to creating better offers on their catalogue of over 10 million books.
According to The Publishers Association just 16% of total books are sold digitally, showing the physical book is still king, and reports out of the US suggest that the growth in consumers switching to e-books is tapering.
Amazon originally made their name as an online bookstore when they launched 20 years ago, but if recent reports are to be believed they’ve been piling the pressure on publishers to provide even larger discounts to drive their margins. With Amazon being the highest volume sales channel for many publishers this pressure is hard to resist forcing them to agree to challenging terms.
Flubit believe this is an area where Amazon’s dominance can be challenged, as CEO and Founder Bertie Stephens explains “We’re working with some of the biggest names in book retailing and because of our private marketplace we know we can beat Amazon when it comes to giving our customers a better offer. We have millions of discounted books available. So many in fact that if you laid out every book we have available through our online retailers they would reach from London to Rome!”
Having already eaten into Amazon’s UK market share across numerous verticals Flubit.com have ambitions to become a credible alternative for UK book retailers and publishers as Stephens suggests: “With Amazon charging UK book sellers commissions of over 17% they are already generating healthy revenues from the publishing industry. This is a large chunk to take away when margins are already being squeezed but represents an opportunity for flubit.com. Our dynamic margins and valuable market data mean we can work with retailers to ensure they are getting the prices they want, whilst the customer still gets a great deal.”
Customers have already saved thousands of pounds buying their books through Flubit.com. Users simply provide the web link of the book they are about to buy online and Flubit creates a better, unique offer that won’t exist elsewhere.
As well as asking users to submit book reviews and micro Twitter reviews for free books Flubit will be working with the local community and a literacy charity supporting them through donations.
To find out more about the initiative visit flubit.com/books
Photo: By Mcwesty at en.wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
