AALBC is able to sell the physical books we showcase, on our website, because of a wide variety of important partnerships with distributors and publishers including; Black Classic Press; Africa World Press & The Red Sea Press; Lushena Books; and Ingram.
Audiobooks sales are done through our partnership with Libro.fm. Libro.fm’s audiobooks service is objectively superior to Audible (owned by Amazon), because when you buy audiobook from Libro.fm you own them — even it you cancel your subscription.
Libro.fm is also Social Purpose Corporation (SPC) who has demonstrated a commitment to serving readers and independent booksellers, like AALBC.
AALBC currently partners with a My Must Reads for the sale of eBooks. They offer a fine alternative to the Kindle eBook (owned by Amazon).
To sell books that are not in our store we use Bookshop.org. Bookshop gives the bookseller the entire profit margin. Yes, you read that correctly, Bookshop doesn’t earn money off sales generated by booksellers. All profit from the sales we refer come back to AALBC. This is almost 10 times what Amazon.com offers booksellers! Bookshop.org is in the process of being certified as a Benefit Corporations (B-Corp), so they are very serious about supporting independent booksellers.
Often, readers would like to support AALBC with the purchase of a book that we do not showcase on our online store. Bookshop allows us to profit from the sales of these books too. The best way to buy a book not showcased on AALBC, and support our site, is to visit this page. There you can search for, and purchase, over 15 million different titles.
Readers, by supporting indie booksellers, and the businesses who support us, you are ensuring that stores like AALBC can continue to grow and that our stories and history is told with fidelity.
In a world where a single company (Amazon) dominates the sales of physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks the entire book ecosystem is put at a disadvantage in terms of discoverability of books and revenue to the professionals who make books possible.
Authors, if your books, eBooks, and Audiobooks are only available from Amazon, independent booksellers, even online booksellers like AALBC, can not buy them to sell in our stores. This is by design, as it provides a strong incentive to send readers to Amazon. This further strengthens Amazon and weakens the rest of the book ecosystem, and readers are less well served as a result.