[joemi]

I don't think you know too much about how the book retail industry works. If people are dropshipping from anywhere, they're dropshipping from Ingram, which is in the US. Some of the stuff they carry might be printed in Asia, but it's not shipping directly from there to individual US customers. If I had to guess, this is how I'd expect bookshop.org to be fulfilling orders that they fulfill themselves. I can't remember if bookshop.org kicks any fulfillment to its indie bookstore partners, but if they do, those stores are almost certainly using Ingram dropshipping or fulfilling from the store's in-store inventory.

That said, it's still not nearly as good for indie bookstores as just buying directly from the indie bookstore, but it's pretty far from your characterization.

[melony]

I was referring to OP's product. The non-book part of Amazon sources the majority of their products from asia. Bookshop was just a point of comparison. Their schtick is to complain on media (said media is conveniently on an anti-big tech crusade right now) about small indie book stores being oppressed by Amazon while ignoring the fact that most publishing is centralized upstream.

[joemi]

I see your point, though it wasn't as clear from your first post.

To be fair, publishers being consolidated is much smaller problem for bookstores than Amazon is. While publisher consolidation is real (Penguin Random House is quite a beast!), it is not total; many publishers exist that have not been absorbed by the major publishers. And there are multiple major publishers a tier below the aforementioned PRH. Whereas when it comes to sales, the main competitor for _all_ bookstores is pretty definitively Amazon. So there is some merit to what Bookshop is doing, and it's not quite as hypocritical as you seem to make it out to be.