For book lovers of all kinds, the reading world presents many debates: Are audiobooks real books? Is it ethical to buy my books secondhand? Does ditching Amazon actually harm indie authors who rely on sales?
The choice to shop anywhere — from a big box retailer, or from a myriad of Amazon alternatives — is a personal choice, colored by plenty of external factors.
But two bibliophiles in the United Kingdom — Gemma Lovett and Sara Montgomery — have added one more option to the mix.
The pair has just debuted their new online bookshop: BookKind.
Like any online book retailer, it has thousands upon thousands of titles. But it also presents one distinct offering: A 10% portion of all sales will benefit eight charities that support causes like health, literacy, environment, racial justice, humanitarian aid, and more.
Right now, nonprofit partners include:
- Maggie’s, a cancer support organization
- Mental Health Foundation, which funds mental health research and treatments
- Dementia UK, which provides nurses, specialists, and support to families navigating memory loss
- Read For Good, a group that donates books to young people in need
- The Runnymede Trust, a legacy racial justice organization with 50 years of advocacy work
- Surfers Against Sewage, a group that cleans the oceans through community cleanups and anti-pollution advocacy
- War Child UK, a global nonprofit that advocates for and helps children in war zones
- Great Ormond Street Hospital Charity, which improves the quality of life for children with rare and complex illnesses
The selection process for onboarding these charities was personal, with Montgomery bringing in her own lived experiences with familial loss to dementia and cancer.
Their give-back efforts will also include an “Acts of BookKindness” initiative in which they donate books to schools and hospitals. The pair has already committed to giving 500 books to a local school.
“We really want to feel like people are engaging with this at all levels, both from customers, but also within the industry,” Montgomery told The Bookseller.
“It would be amazing if [marketing and publicity teams] would like to tie their campaigns to BookKind in a really meaningful way,” Lovett added.
This strategic thinking makes sense, seeing as both Lovett and Montgomery are executives at Monwell, a company that manages e-commerce bookstores for media brands in the U.K., and now, BookKind.
Their backgrounds led to the realization that they wanted to combine bookselling with social impact, jumping on when they “saw an opportunity to really align the everyday act of book buying with supporting causes that matter.”
Their model is similar to Bookshop.org, an online bookseller that donates a portion of all its sales to independent bookshops of the shoppers’ choice. When BookKind shoppers add titles to their cart, they are told how much of their total will go to one of the nonprofit partners, and they can opt in or out of a specific cause.
“Having successfully launched bookshops for big media brands such as the Guardian and the Times, we wanted to do something on our own – and to give back,” Montgomery told The Guardian.
She added that the company plans to “grow BookKind into one of the U.K.’s leading book retailers while making a meaningful impact by supporting charities that help the most vulnerable people in society and address critical global challenges.”
While based in the U.K., the outlet does ship to other countries, including the United States. For book shoppers who remain with retailers like Amazon for the cost and shipping benefits, BookKind leaders say they’ll have to consider what’s most important to them.
“You could probably buy your books from cheaper places, but we keep our prices aligned with the recommended retail price so that as much money as possible goes to charity,” a spokesperson from BookKind told The Guardian.
Still, U.K. shoppers can benefit from “fast deliveries” and free postage on orders over £25.
BookKind offers over 200,000 titles and can sort them “by cause” on the website, including books about mental health, LGBTQ+ books, books about the environment, children’s books featuring disabilities, and many others.
The brand’s motto, to “read generously,” carries multiple meanings.
“It’s both, read a lot, read as much as you can, buy books, read books, share books, talk about books, read books to children,” Montgomery told The Bookseller.
“But then it also has the double meaning of — you can buy books and do good.”
Lovett chimed in, adding that it also means “feeling good about where you’re book shopping.”
As for the charity partners, they’re eager to collaborate with empathetic readers looking to make a difference with their new reads.
“With representation comes inspiration, and so we’re proud to support BookKind’s ambition to broaden people’s literary collections to include more books by authors of colour and from a range of different backgrounds and perspectives,” said Ellie Ikiebe of Runnymede Trust.
“This is how we can build empathy and a sense of belonging and understanding in an increasingly fractured society.”
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