Amazon’s book sale crashes Independent Bookstore Day—and readers are pushing back

Independent bookstores have long been champions of community, curiosity, and culture—and on Saturday, April 26, they get their moment in the spotlight. Independent Bookstore Day, a nationwide celebration of indie bookstores, invites readers to shop locally and support the spaces that keep storytelling vibrant. But this year, the festivities come with a wrinkle: Amazon is holding a major book sale at the same time, and many booksellers and readers aren’t having it.

Independent bookstores and users on BookTok are expressing their frustration with Amazon while encouraging readers to stay off of the online shopping site and instead make the trek to their local bookstore for the day. Some are even directly calling out Amazon and another large book retailer, Barnes & Noble, for having their sales so close to Independent Bookstore Day. 

“So if you didn’t know—and it’s okay if you didn’t, because I feel like Amazon is working overtime to try and overshadow the whole day—this Saturday, April 26, is Independent Bookstore Day,” TikTok user torithatnerd said in a video posted Thursday. 

Independent Bookstore Day began as California Bookstore Day in 2013, as a take on Record Store Day, according to Samantha Schoech in the Los Angeles Review of Books. Schoech wrote that it was a way for indie bookstores to band together and encourage a celebration of all things independent bookstores have to offer the public. 

“Independent bookstores are not just stores—they’re community centers and locals anchors,” Schoech wrote. “They are entire universes of ideas that contain the possibility of real serendipity.”

While the celebratory day started in California, sponsored by the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association, Schoech took the event nationwide in 2014. Soon after, the American Booksellers Association (ABA) began sponsoring the event, and this year a record-breaking number of stores are participating. Over 1,600 bookstores from all 50 states plan to celebrate on Saturday. 

Protecting books in a digital age

Andy Hunter is CEO and founder of Bookshop.org, a website and business with a B Corp certification that works to acknowledge and encourage the convenience of online shopping for books while still supporting local bookshops. 

On the website, customers choose a bookstore they’d like to support when buying books, and the profits from orders are sent directly to the bookstore they selected. If customers opt not to choose a story, their purchases contribute to a profit-sharing pool that helps all associated bookshops affiliated with Bookshop.org. 

“Every independent bookstore is kind of an advocate and activist for the importance of books and reading in our society,” Hunter said. “So we want books to survive. We don’t want Amazon’s rise to be an extinction for local bookstores that are precious.”

In April 2024, the ABA filed a motion to intervene in the Federal Trade Commission’s antitrust lawsuit against Amazon. The motion argues that Amazon has a monopoly power over books and can offer books at prices that independent bookstores find impossible to match. The motion, however, was eventually denied due to both the FTC and Amazon’s argument that ABA’s claims were distinct from the FTC’s allegations. 

For some BookTok-ers, though, the timing of Amazon’s sale feels intentional. Though Amazon’s books may be cheaper than an average independent bookstore’s prices, influencers are still encouraging their followers to avoid Amazon, or even go to their local library if independent bookstores are too far out of their price range. 

“It feels like an intentional kick in the face to local bookstores,” Hunter said regarding the Amazon sale. “Independent bookstores generally have to charge full price because those margins are what help them survive. Amazon engages in predatory pricing.”

Amazon denied these allegations. A spokesperson said, “The overlap was unintentional. The dates for our sale were set this year to accommodate additional participating countries.”

Whether intentional or not, Amazon’s sale dates seem to be callously ignoring the importance of Independent Bookstore Day, Hunter said. 

“Books are really important, and they’re too important to society to entrust to a single retailer, whether or not that retailer has good intentions,” he said. “Independent bookstores are fighting to keep an independent marketplace for books and ideas alive, and Independent Bookstore Day is a day that everybody who supports that effort, who wants a diverse ecosystem around books, shows their support.”