Decentering Amazon: Where to Get Books in 2025
🎶Pave the way, put your back into it🎶
As someone on a mission to remove Amazon from my life, I’ve been looking for online bookstore alternatives that share my values or do good things for the greater community.
And here’s what I’ve found…👇🏼
Online bookstore alternatives to Amazon
No money? No problem, free books (and other ideas)
How to support indie authors
4 Alternatives to Amazon
Shop Local
Look out for local, independent bookstores in your area. The closest one to me is about 2 hours away, so sometimes they’re not feasible. But if you go to their website, some do offer shipping.
Thrift stores are also another option.
Better World Books
Better World Books is an online retailer with a huge selection of used and new books.
Here’s the mission statement:
We give book lovers across the world access to the power of knowledge at an affordable price and help them stay connected through reading. We better the world, one book at a time, by making a difference with every purchase through donations and environmental programs. It’s simple: Buy Books. Do Good.
So far, they’ve raised over $35 million for libraries and literacy. Do good, indeed.
Thrift Books
If you’re secondhand, Thrift Books is the place to go. They carry books, movies, TV shows, music, and videogames. They hand-grade every book in their inventory and offer books in a variety of formats and conditions.
Thrif Books is big on social causes—primarily donating to schools, non-profits, and those rebuilding after natural disasters.
Their mission:
We believe reading empowers people, offering them empathy to live for a moment in someone else’s shoes, education—a critical asssest to improving one’s life—and an occasional escape to fantastic worlds inhabited by interesting characters. We save millions of books eveyr year from being destroyed, but our mission goes beyond the environment. We save these books and make them accessible to readers for the chance to shape another mind, share another story, and teaching a bit of wisdom.
Is anyone else getting weepy reading these mission statements? 💙
Bookshop.org
Bookshop.org connects readers with independent booksellers all over the world. Read it straight from their webiste:
We believe local bookstores are essential community hubs that foster culture, curiosity, and a love of reading, and we're committed to helping them thrive.
Every purchase on the site financially supports independent bookstores. Our platform gives independent bookstores tools to compete online and financial support to help them maintain their presence in local communities.
Update Jan 28, 2025: Bookshop.org debuts its e-book platform!
Barnes & Noble & Books-A-Million
Barnes & Noble and BAM are still great options if you have one nearby. They donated primarily to left-leaning politicians and stand against book bans, proudly displaying them in stores and online.
Did you know that Barnes & Noble is the only major company that is standing in Amazon’s way from having a monopoly on the book selling industry? Never feel bad about spending your money there.
Where to Find Free Books
Libraries
This one was obviously, wasn’t it? 😅
If you don’t have a library card, I highly recommend getting one this week and bring someone with you to get theirs too. Even if you don’t use it, it helps your local library system when it comes to end-of-year numbers and their funding.
Libraries are a great space for community building and important resources—which is another reason why they’re often on the political chopping block. The more we use our libraries, the harder it’ll be to get rid of them.
When you’re there, ask your librarian what online app they use for their ebooks and audiobooks. Here’s a few of the most used ones:
cloudLibrary
Libby
Hoopla
Local Book Swaps
One of the local coffeeshops in my town do a monthly book swap where people come and…swap books. If you don’t have a strong attachment to your books and want to make some new friends, book swaps are a great option!
How to Support Indie Authors
While we’re decentering Amazon, we have to remember that Amazon is one of the biggest distributers of indie authors and their books.
You could ask the author where’s the best place to buy their book (if their DMs are open). Typically, I ask for the one that’ll give them the biggest cut. Sometimes that’s buying directly through their website and sometimes it’s whatever format (ebook or phsyical) through Amazon.
Most indie authors will direct you to the best place to purchase their books. And if that’s Amazon, that’s okay. Supporting indie authors is more important than sticking it to the oligarch.
📝A Final Note
This Substack will likely get more political as we get deeper into the final term of DJT. Living in 2025 means our existence is political—and it always will be. My entire career is books, meaning that at it’s core, it’s political.
Yes, books are political. Those in power wouldn’t try to burn or ban them if they didn’t fear the content inside them.
So, if you’re with me in this fight, stick around—I’d be glad to have you.
I’m going to continue writing craft deep dives, figure out how to talk about media literacy and reading comprehension, write up reviews on banned books, cover more of the editing side of things (especially for new editors), and I’ve been toying with the idea of interviewing authors to learn about their craft and writing process.
Comment below to let me know what you’d like to see more of:
And with that, I’ll leave you with a final quote:
“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
Martin Luther King Jr.
I ditched my kindle and bought a Kobo. Use overdrive from my local library for ebooks and half price books, Costco and Barnes and Noble for physical books
Love this article and already use Thriftbooks often! Appreciate having more options on hand instead of Amazon. While always supporting my local independent bookstores!