Ethical Bookshops

Maybe it’s the political landscape, but readers are showing an unprecedented appetite for escapism – in 2024, booksellers reported record sales for fiction print books. According to figures from Nielsen Consumer, categories such as romance, historical fiction, and science fiction and fantasy never had it so good: sales rose 10% from the previous year. Elsewhere in the publishing industry, UK sales dropped 0.6% in 2024, although they remain above pre-Covid levels.

In less good news, Amazon retains its dominance of bookselling in the UK with more than 50% of all print sales. 

Since 2012, Ethical Consumer has been calling for a boycott of Amazon as one of the biggest corporate tax avoiders in the UK.

According to our estimates, Amazon's corporation tax avoidance could have cost the UK around £433m in lost taxes in 2023 alone. As well as its own online book business, the company owns AbeBooks online bookshop and Audible audiobooks.

The good news is that there are lots of alternative places to buy your reading material, including your local independent bookseller, other online retailers, and charity shops. You could even pop into your local library. In this guide, we also give you some pointers to finding your local radical bookshop.

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

Which bookshops are in the ethical bookshop guide?

This guide reflects an evolving book buying market, featuring physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks.

• Online-only: AbeBooks, Alibris, Apple iBooks, Audible, Audiobooks.com, AwesomeBooks, Better World Books, Books Etc, Bookshop.org, Biblio, eBay, Google Books, Guardian Bookshop, Hive, Rakuten Kobo, Wordery, and World of Books.
• In person (and some of them are online) bookshops: Blackwells, Daunt Books, Foyles, Hatchards, Oxfam bookshops, TG Jones, Waterstones.

To help make sense of it all we have annotated the brand names on the score table with P (for print books), A (for audiobooks), E (for ebooks) and * (for secondhand). 

Alternatives to Amazon for books

Why avoid Amazon, and its AbeBooks, and Audible brands? These brands rank lowest in our ethical bookshop guide due to:

• 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 guides to ethical online retailers, and delivery companies.

High street bookshops

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

High street physical bookshop brands in this guide are: Blackwells, Daunt Books, Foyles, Hatchards, Oxfam bookshops, TG Jonesand Waterstones.

Other than Daunt, TG Jones and Oxfam, these in person shops are all owned by Elliot Investment Management.

TG Jones bought the high street bookshops of WH Smith and has rebranded them. WH Smith still owns the shopos in railway stations and airports but we haven't included them in this guide.

How ethical are Blackwells and Waterstones?

Having swallowed bookshop brands such as Blackwells, Foyles Hatchards and Wordery, Waterstones is still hungry for expansion. 

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. Elliott Investment lost points for its lack of ethical policies and this has affected Waterstones’ score placing it near the bottom of the ethical score table, just a few points above Amazon. Elliot's founder has also been criticised for his pro-Israel lobbying.

Buying books online 

There are two broad categories of online bookshops. 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-only bookshops

Online bookshops selling print books in this guide: AbeBooks (owned by Amazon), Alibris, Amazon, AwesomeBooks, Better World Books, Biblio, Books Etc, Bookshop.org, eBay, Google Books, Guardian Bookshop, Hive, Wordery (now owned by Waterstones), and World of Books.

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

Online bookshops which support local bookshops

There are several options of online bookshops which actively support in person local bookshops. We feature Bookshop.org and Hive in this guide.

Offering an online presence to independent booksellers, Hive operates as a platform for a UK-wide network of affiliated bookshops. Customers ordering online can opt to either collect from their local independent bookshop or, if they have their order posted to them, can nominate an independent bookshop to support. Hive pays the bookshop a minimum 10% commission on the net value of the order, rising to 25% for in-store collection. “We're passionate about the books we sell, our brilliant customers, and the independent bookshops we support,” the company states. “We offer the advantages of online shopping, including our extensive range and competitive pricing.” The commission may not match the cut an independent bookshop may take should you order directly through them, but Hive does offer them another option (other than Amazon).

Bookshop.org offers a 30% cut to independent booksellers for in-person collection. In an Ethical Consumer questionnaire, the company states: “On all other sales, 10% of the RRP goes into a profit pool which is shared equally amongst the indies on our platform.” Bookshop.org explains that independent bookshops tell them that they receive a mere 7% of their orders for print books online, compared to an industry average of 50%. The company attributes this to independent bookstores lacking the time and skills to develop their online presence. If its business model sounds similar to that of Hive, perhaps that’s because Bookshop.org’s sole direct supplier is the distributor and wholesale company Gardners, which is also a sister company to Hive.

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.

Ethical secondhand books

There are lots of options for finding and buying secondhand books, 

Buying secondhand books

Repairing and reusing items significantly reduces carbon emissions, as highlighted in our Climate Gap report. Our 2030 target is for 50% of purchases to be secondhand. Currently, 32% of print books sold are currently secondhand, earning companies focused on this market extra points in our climate rating.

In the past, some writers would contact us to criticise us for recommending secondhand books as they got no income for their work if this happened. However, AuthorShare now gives royalties for used book sales. 

Secondhand books are generally cheaper than new. We look at price in more detail later on. 

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

Other non-Amazon secondhand sellers in the guide are AwesomeBooks.com, Daunt, eBay, and Hatchards. 

We also recommend your local bookshop who may sell secondhand books.

Use the public library for free

We have a fantastic library service in the UK. It's been 'recycling' books since the Public Libraries Act of 1850.

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 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. 

Some people may worry about 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.

The circular economy: sell or pass on books

Some online secondhand book retailers allow you to sell your books via their websites or their own apps. 

Both Awesome Books and World of Books featured in this guide have facilities to type in a barcode or ISBN to find the book’s value. If you’re moving house, or your bookshelves are groaning under the weight of your compulsive secondhand purchasing, this may be an option for you. 

However, at the time of writing a cursory exploration of the net worth of today’s lunchtime reading material did not reveal this as a get-rich-quick scheme, and some readers may choose instead to circulate their unwanted items through their local charity shop.

Price comparison of different booksellers

We compared a selection of Ethical Consumer “staff picks” across six different booksellers in August 2025: two sold new books; two secondhand; one eBooks and one audiobooks. All were subject to availability. We chose fiction, non-fiction, biography, a children’s book, and a curriculum book. Bear in mind, this is a very small sample and for illustrative purposes. All prices for paper books are for paperback versions. Also bear in mind that online booksellers may add delivery charges and that the cost of audiobooks may be lower with multiple purchases.

Where figures were not available, we have taken an average for five books. Generally, the more ethical the company, the lower the spend on books..

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.

Who owns World of 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.

Inequality and access to books

According to the National Literary Trust, 90% of children and young people aged 5 to 18 said that they had a book of their own at home. But this high figure hides a lot of differences between households and different people, and between owning one book or many.

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 an accessible format, according to the United Nations.

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.

Tax conduct of bookshops

Why do many bookshops score poorly on tax conduct? 

Consolidation in the industry means parent companies are often located in tax havens. Amazon, a major tax avoider, owns AbeBooks and Audible. In 2023, Amazon's tax avoidance cost the UK an estimated £433 million.

With a Jersey-based Ultimate Holding Company, Bookshop Topco Limited, Waterstones also failed to score any points under Tax, as did its subsidiaries and brands Blackwells, Foyles, Wordery, and Hatchards.

And Big Tech companies Apple iBooks and eBay failed to score in this category – within their corporate structures, each owned holding companies based in tax havens.

Climate action by bookshops

Guardian Bookshop, Oxfam Books, and eBay all amply demonstrated their climate commitments in line with international agreements to reach net zero by 2050 and had quantified evidence of having reduced their main climate impacts. Guardian and Oxfam reported fully their Scope 1 to 3 emissions in tonnes of CO2e.

Points were awarded in this category for products or work to transition to a lower-carbon society. These included companies with predominantly secondhand books, non-physical eBooks, or audiobooks. Audio/text publisher xigxag gained points in this way; the company also reported its carbon footprint, despite being a small operator with just three employees. Sellers of predominantly secondhand books, such as AwesomeBooks, Better World Books, and World of Books, also picked up points in this category.

Although AbeBooks acts as a platform for sellers of new and secondhand books, it lost points under the Climate rating for the environmental performance of its parent, Amazon.com Inc, which has also attracted third-party criticism for the inadequacy of its environmental reporting.
 

Workers

Eight companies scored highly under the Workers category including Oxfam Books, xigxag and eBooks.com. The latter two companies gained points as they were not involved in the manufacturing process and therefore avoided some of the potential workers' rights abuses associated with the production of goods. To perform highly as a seller of physical books, Oxfam met all required conditions of the Ethical Trading Initiative base code and demonstrated an extensive commitment to workers’ conditions within its supply chain. Notably, the charity was transparent about its tier 1 suppliers; it acknowledged the impact its purchasing practices can have on workers, formed long-term relationships with them and ensured good purchasing practices.

However, all other in-person booksellers failed to demonstrate a commitment to workers’ rights and scored no points in this category.
 

Company ethos rating for bookshops

Even fewer companies distinguished themselves in this category than in Tax. As a registered charity, it is not surprising that Oxfam should have performed well. The organisation did not lose any points for revealing its highest paid director’s salary – £127,346 – was below our threshold.

A surprising high performer in this category was Australia-based eBooks.com. The company picked up points for being 20% owned by its employees. In an Ethical Consumer questionnaire, the company stated that it paid dividends to its employees alongside shareholders.

Among this category’s poor performers was Waterstones – the company is owned by US private equity firm Elliott, which lost points for their involvement in lobbying, and as a shareholder in oil and gas giant BP.

The Bookshop.org brand, which is owned by Brooklyn-based indie Bookshop Inc, picked up points for being a certified B Corporation.
 

Additional research by Louisa Gould.

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