The online bookseller: why I've nothing to fear from the Kindle & Amazon

Barry Crow on identifying a USP...

“We are competing against the likes of Amazon. When someone thinks of buying books online they don’t use Google, they go straight to Amazon, so fwe have to be more than just an online second-hand book store.

“From the very start we partnered with the Woodland Trust to emphasise the recycling aspect of it, so every time we sell a book we donate 5p to the Woodland Trust.

“The Woodland Trust is using our donations and planting new trees all the time. It’s nice to help replenish the trees that were originally cut down to make the books.”

On competing with e-books...

“Looking forward, obviously the Kindle is in fashion at the moment, but I don’t think we see that as a particular threat.

Some people love gadgets and a gadget that encourages people to read more is great, but I think the majority of our customers, like myself, still love the feel of a book

“Some people love gadgets and a gadget that encourages people to read more is great. But I think the majority of our customers, like myself, still love the feel of a book. I can never see myself moving across to an book e-reader.

“Although e-readers are fantastic in the sense that you can read as many books as you want on holiday, but I certainly wouldn’t feel comfortable lying on the beach with a £200 piece of kit.”

On future challenges...

“We're making our website more of a community, we don’t just want to be an online book store. We want to be more of a book community and encourage people to share their reviews and make recommendations.

“We also want to take that experience and have a miniaturised version so it’s more accessible on mobile phones.

“I think going forward, the next five years they’ll be a massive shift from traditional desktop to mobile. All websites will have to adapt to that, and that’s probably our biggest challenge going forward.”