Ethical Bookshops

In 2022, 669 million physical books were sold in the UK, which is the highest number ever recorded. In 2023, the Publishers Association reported that there were increases for sales of print and digital formats last year: print books increased by 3%, while sales of digital formats increased by 5%.

A large amount of the profit would have been sucked up by Amazon. Around 10% of Amazon's revenue comes from its book sales, totalling $28 billion (approximately £22 billion) every year. The company dominates the global and UK book market, selling around 300 million print books annually. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that there are lots of alternatives to buying books from Amazon, including supporting your local independent bookseller, buying secondhand books from charity shops, borrowing from your local library, and making use of community book initiatives. We couldn’t include independent bookshops in our scoretable as there are so many but we’ve listed some of your favourites later in the guide.

We’ve included ebook and audiobook retailers in the guide as alternatives to Amazon.

Key to the score table: [P] = print books   [A] = audio books   [E] = ebooks.

Alternatives to Amazon for books

Amazon and its brands AbeBooks and Audible are at the bottom of our ethical rankings for bookshops.

Three of the main issues with Amazon are:

• tax avoidance
• building a monopoly
• denying workers’ rights

For around a decade Ethical Consumer has being calling for a boycott of the company over its tax avoidance which costs the UK millions in public funds every year. During this time we've seen resistance to Amazon grow: we have been joined by Fair Tax Mark, Tax Justice Network and others in condemning the company’s tax record; we’ve seen workers, unions, anti-racism organisations, anti-gentrification movements and others raise voices against Amazon globally; and hundreds of people signing a pledge to avoid Amazon.

By boycotting the company, we are taking part in this global movement and increasing pressure on Amazon – or the legislation that allows its abuses – to change. 

Fortunately, in many markets there are wonderful alternatives to Amazon, and this includes bookshops.

This guide takes you through all the options for bookshops, and is part of a series of 'Amazon Alternatives' which includes our guide to ethical online retailers, and guide to delivery companies.

Which bookshops are in the guide?

The majority of the bookshops in this guide are online-only. These are: AbeBooks, Alibris, Amazon, Apple, AwesomeBooks, Books Etc, Bookshop.org, Biblio, eBay, Google Books, Guardian Bookshop, Hive, Litalist, Rakuten Kobo, Wordery, and World of Books.

Physical high street chain bookshops included are Blackwell’s, Daunt Books, Foyles, Oxfam bookshops, The Works, Waterstones, and WHSmith.

High street bookshops

If your local town doesn't have an independent bookshop, you may well have a high street chain bookshop such as Waterstones or WHSmith.

How ethical is Waterstones?

Waterstones is the largest UK dedicated book retailer. It styles itself as “Your Local Bookshop”, despite having over 280 bookshops across the UK. It’s true in the sense that you’re likely to find one of its shops where you live and they do sometimes have local sections. It says that it’s “the last surviving national bookshop chain” but that’s because it’s acquired many of the others. It owns Foyles, Hatchards, Wordery and bought Blackwell’s in 2022.

It’s owned by US firm Elliott Investment Management which is renowned for buying the debts of struggling countries on the cheap and pursuing them for full repayment. Since we last updated the booksellers guide we’ve developed a policy and transparency rating for investment companies. Elliott Investment lost marks for its lack of ethical policies and this affected Waterstones’ score which has gone down from 7 to 3.5. This places it near the bottom of the ethical score table, just a few points above Amazon. Elliott also lost marks for political donations, lobbying and excessive pay – the highest paid director of its UK arm received over £11million in 2021.

How ethical is WHSmith?

WHSmith is a physical and online newsagent and bookseller. Most of its physical branches are in travel locations such as stations and airports and it has operations in 30 countries. It owns the American Marshall Retail Group which has shops in dozens of Las Vegas casinos.

For a large multinational it has decent policies, getting best ratings for supply chain management and tax conduct, but it did lose marks for excessive director pay and operations in oppressive regimes.

Buying books online

There are two broad categories of online bookshops which are alternatives to Amazon. There are online retailers who work on their own, and there are some online shops who support local independent bookshops. We outline both types below.

Online bookshops

Bookshops which fall into this category include AbeBooks (owned by Amazon), Alibris, Amazon, Apple, AwesomeBooks, Books Etc, Biblio, eBay, Google, Guardian Bookshop, Rakuten Kobo, Wordery (now owned by Waterstones), and World of Books.

Some of these sell new and secondhand books, some sell only secondhand books.

World of Books was founded in 2005 and is an online-only bookshop which focuses on secondhand books and other media. It’s majority-owned by private equity firm, Livingbridge. It raises money for book-related charities through its World of Books Foundation and is a certified B Corporation. It promotes circularity with its Ziffit app which you can use to trade in your old books.

Online bookshops which support local bookshops

When you buy a book from Bookshop.org it lets you choose a specific bookshop to support. They receive 30% of the cover price. If you don’t select a specific bookshop, 10% of the cover price of your order goes into an earnings pool that is evenly distributed among participating independent bookshops each month.

Hive is an online bookseller that supports local high street bookshops by paying them a 10% cut of its sales. This rises to 25% if you collect your online order from a physical shop. Once you’ve bought your book you can choose which bookshop receives your money. Hive is a small operation, owned by the much larger Little Group, a British company which specialises in book wholesale and library supply. It got worst ratings for carbon and environmental reporting and lost half a mark for excessive director pay.

Litalist is a small British company established in 2020. It’s a platform that lets you buy books from your local independent bookshop and share book recommendations with other users. It recently joined the Authorshare scheme, paying 10% of the profits from a secondhand book to the author.

Search and buy from ethical bookshops from one site

If you want to search multiple ethical platforms at once, take a look at the Ethical Book Search from Ethical Revolution. The site searches the more ethical choices of book retailers in one search and can be adjusted for different countries, format, new or secondhand etc. Results are presented in order of price from each bookshop, and also with their Ethiscore rating, so you can make an informed choice as to which retailer to use. You can also filter out which ones not to use in your search.

Buying secondhand and using libraries

Buying secondhand books

For those of us who still want to hold a physical book or don’t have internet access, buying secondhand books is a no-brainer in terms of cutting the environmental costs of book production and saving money. In the UK, around 32% of print books sold are secondhand.

Bookshops selling secondhand books received a positive mark in the Product Sustainability column.

And buying secondhand no longer has to mean that authors lose out. Authorshare, gives royalties for used book sales. Read our contribution from the Society of Authors further down to find out more.

Our recommended and best buy brands which sell secondhand books are: Awesome Books, Better World Books, Biblio, Oxfam and World of Books. Other secondhand sellers are Alibris and eBay.

Use the public library for free

We have a fantastic library service in this country. Libraries provide free access to books for all as well as a range of other essential services, particularly for those most affected by the rise in the cost of living. As well as physical books, most now lend ebooks and audiobooks through the Borrow Box and Libby apps. Some lend ereaders too. You can also suggest new books for your library to buy and they’ll often take up your suggestion. In the past all libraries charged fines for overdue books but that’s changing and many no longer charge fines, at least not for children.

To find your local public library visit your local authority website. It's free to join public libraries in the UK.

Sustainability issues and bookshops

Paper sourcing

We only rated a few companies for their paper sourcing. Most companies only retail books so have no control over where the paper comes from. However, WHSmith sells own-brand stationery, The Guardian sells newspapers, and Daunt and Storytel (Audiobooks.com) are publishers as well as retailers.

To get a best rating we look for over 75% recycled paper use and no company achieved this. The Guardian and Storytel got middle ratings and Daunt and WHSmith got worst ratings.

Price comparison of different booksellers

We compared the prices of four book titles across four different booksellers in August 2023, with two selling new books and two selling secondhand books. We chose fiction, non-fiction, memoir, and a children’s book. Since this is a very small sample size, what is presented here is only illustrative.

All prices are for paperback versions, unless stated. Also note that Waterstones has physical bookshops and Books Etc doesn’t, and some online booksellers provide free delivery while others don’t.

If you're looking to save money, there are also lots of book swapping sites around the country, often in stations and old phone boxes. And you can always swap books with your friends.

How do booksellers rate for supply chain management?

We exempted companies that only sell books from this rating. The rating assesses what companies are doing to protect workers’ rights in their supply chains and expects companies to audit factories to check how workers are being treated.

In the book business, it’s publishers who produce books so it’s their responsibility to protect supply chain workers. Only Daunt Books and Audiobooks.com’s owner Storytel are publishers as well as retailers so the rating was applied and both got a worst.

Ebooks.com and Xigxag were also exempt because they don’t make any physical products.

The remaining companies produce things other than books (such as phones and newspapers) and so the full rating was applied. Only Oxfam and WHSmith got best ratings, Apple got a middle, and Google, Guardian Bookshop, Rakuten Kobo, Amazon, and eBay got worst ratings.

Excessive director pay and tax conduct in the bookselling industry

Five companies got worst ratings in both these categories: Amazon, (AbeBooks, Audible), Apple, eBay, Google, and Waterstones (Blackwell’s, Foyles, Hatchards, Wordery).

Inequality and access to books

According to a World of Books survey from 2022, the average UK household has 124 books. However, this average figure hides a lot of differences between households and different people.

Books are a joy which should be accessible for all; however, physically accessing books, low income, illiteracy, and barriers for visually impaired people mean that many people aren’t able to read as they would like to.

According to the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB), there are over 2 million people with visually impaired sight in the UK, which is around 3% of the population. This includes a variety of people with differing levels of vision, from some to none at all. The same RNIB statistics show that women and ethnic minority groups of people are at a greater risk of developing sight loss, due to complicated factors which include societal barriers as well as age.

RNIB has a library of braille books with an online library catalogue on its website. Books are delivered for free for users to then keep or share. Other examples of book collections in braille include the Scottish Braille Press and Clearvision Project lending library for children. The rise of ebooks and audiobooks has also made things more accessible.

However, despite these alternatives, there is still a long way to go in making books and reading more accessible, particularly for those with very little or no sight at all. Audiobook alternatives do not exist for many books and textbooks, and only around 5% of book titles are available in braille format, according to Vision Foundation.

How to support access to books

• You can sponsor a talking book or donate to Royal National Institute of Blind People to support their work in building their library of books in different accessible formats.
• Give a Book promotes reading and book access in prisons, schools, and for disadvantaged children.
• Books Beyond Bars UK connects LGBTQ+ people in prison with books and other print resources.
• The Children’s Book Project promotes reading and book ownership for children.
• Borderline Books collect books no longer needed by publishers, libraries, and shops and distributes them to people who can’t buy or access books.

Supporting indie publishing houses

If you’re looking for something you can’t find, there are a lot of small, independent publishers which have their own bookshops online where you can buy directly from them. Buying in this way funds independent publishing houses which often support more diverse types of writers.

There is a online directory of independent UK publishers that you can explore. These range from Charco Press, specialising in translations of contemporary Latin American literature, to Verso, a large publisher of mostly non-fiction titles on everything from anthropology to sexuality.

Your favourite independent bookshops

There are many independent bookshops around the UK that provide a different experience to bookshop chains. When we were undertaking the research for this guide we asked our readers to tell us about their favourite bookshops. Here are some of the responses we particularly liked.

Category Is Books in Glasgow. On its website it says, “Category Is Books is an independent LGBTQIA+ bookshop in the southside of Glasgow. We hope the bookshop is a space to learn about, be inspired by and share in our love of queer books, history, art, activism, writing and storytelling.” The reader said that it was “An endlessly inspiring and such an important space”.

Two readers recommended Toppings in Ely. They both said that the staff were very knowledgeable and friendly, had “huge stock including local authors and local interest”, and signed and unusual first editions. They also mentioned the coffee.

Two readers chose Scarthin Bookshop in Cromford. “It’s a quirky, excellent bookshop in a lovely setting – overlooking the millpond in an attractive and interesting village. It's a three-storey terraced house completely stuffed with books, including up the stairs (to the extent it needed structural work a few years ago – crowd-funded). It has both new and secondhand. I like its selection, including many books about the local area. The staff are helpful. It has a great café (vegan). I've enjoyed visiting it (from Nottingham) for nearly 50 years.”

October Books in Southampton. “Not just books, they also sell fair trade foods, refills for washing up liquid etc., and run a community café, and more. Made headlines around the world a while back when (facing a rent rise) they bought redundant bank premises and transferred all the stock along the road via a human chain.”

Lighthouse Books in Edinburgh. “They live and breathe human rights, diversity, inclusion, equity, sustainability, and all-out radicalism. They have super-friendly staff, hold fantastic events in their lovely little garden, run brilliant book subscription schemes and curated book selections, and they run an awesome ‘pay it forward’ scheme so you can sub a book for someone who needs one. Everything a bookshop should be!”

The Watermill in Aberfeldy. “As well as being a helpful, knowledgeable, interestingly stocked bookshop it's a gallery and excellent, comfortable cafe where you can browse, read the papers, or just relax. And the building is fascinating and beautifully restored.”

Two readers chose Barter Books in Northumberland. “A secondhand bookshop – but the best shop I have ever been in! It is in the old railway station and retains the platform toilets, a log fire in the waiting room with easy chairs, a model railway connecting shelves, coffee, and biscuits with an honesty box etc etc etc. Sheer delight!”

Jacqson Diego Story Emporium in Essex. “They are a not-for-profit, social enterprise, children's bookshop. The bookshop has been around for over 10 years. The shop is small but provides a calming, comforting space, with plenty of seating and beautifully displayed, easy to browse, shelves of books. The staff are incredibly welcoming and always happy to recommend books for all age groups. They discuss their recommendations with the children without ever talking down to them. I love taking my grandkids to Jacqson Diego and seeing how happy and interested they are, either to choose some new books by their favourite authors, or to discuss new suggested books with the staff.”

Additional research by Shanta Bhavnani.

The abbreviations in the score table indicate what types of books are sold: [P] = print, [E] = ebooks, [A] = audiobooks.