Amazon has decided to close Book Depository, at the end of April, as the suppliers and publishers who collaborated with it learned. This decision follows the announcement by Amazon, which has controlled the bookseller since 2011, that it will “cut” some positions in its devices and books divisions.
Amazon closes the Book Depository online store
Book Depository was born in 2004 a Gloucester by Stuart Felton and Andrew Crawford, a former Amazon worker, with the idea of “selling ‘less more’ instead of ‘more less’“. His goal was to deliver 6 million books of different genres and themesinstead of focusing only on the best sellers.
It was initially a competitor to Amazon. But then the e-commerce giant acquired it in 2011, causing many in the publishing world to worry about the growing domain of the US company on the UK book market.
As reported by the specialized magazine The Bookseller, an email sent to suppliers and publishers communicated that Book Depository will cease its activity and that the last day for customers to place orders is April 26th. “In the coming weeks, we will proceed to shut down the business, which will result in the removal of our seller offerings on the marketplace and the decommissioning of our website,” wrote Andy Chart, Head of Supplier Management.
“I want to sincerely thank you, on behalf of all of us at Book Depository and our book-loving customers, for your invaluable partnership over the years in helping make print books more accessible to readers around the world,” Chart added.
This action is part of a series of cuts on Amazon announced by CEO Andy Jassy. That he thought of closing some of the divisions dedicated to books, especially paper ones – from which Amazon began its climb in the e-commerce world.