British online book sales site Book Depository, owned by e-commerce giant Amazon, will cease to exist by the end of next April.
The closure of Amazon Book Depository follows a series of budget cuts and layoffs for the powerful GAFAM member, with two separate layoffs affecting at least 27,000 people across multiple divisions, including the high-yield AWS cloud division and its book sales facility and operations.
We regret to inform you that the Book Depository will close on April 26, 2023. You can still place orders until noon (12:00 Moscow time) on April 26, and we will continue to deliver your purchases and provide support for any issues with orders until June 23. 2023 pic.twitter.com/zMSdn59KbY
— Book Depository (@bookdepository) April 4, 2023
Andy Chart, head of sourcing at the Book Depository, said:
Over the next few weeks, we will be liquidating the business, including ceasing our activities as a marketplace seller and closing our website. I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere gratitude to all our team members and our book lovers for the support they have given us over the years in helping us make printed books more accessible to readers around the world.
Book Depository, Former Amazon Competitor That Has Disappeared Forever
Founded in 2004 in Gloucester, a city in the southwest of England near the Welsh border, Book Depository (originally called The Book Depository) was a small competitor to Amazon’s online book business, delivering books to readers in over 100 countries. At the time of its acquisition in 2011, some feared that it was a sign that Amazon was tightening its grip on online book sales in the UK, and those fears may not have been unfounded. However, despite industry protests, the deal was eventually approved by regulators, with the Office of Fair Trade (OFT) stating at the time that the Book Depository was not a real competitor due to its relative size.
Since its takeover, Amazon has done little to integrate Book Depository into its platform, at least in terms of branding. Indeed, the Book Depository website has never explicitly stated that it is owned by Amazon, an approach the company has taken with other similar acquisitions it has made in the industry, such as Goodreads, a social reading platform it acquired in 2013..
Amazon is in trouble…
In addition to closing Book Depository, Amazon also confirmed a few weeks ago that it was closing the business of DPReview, a reputable camera review site also based in the UK, which it bought in 2007. Amazon announced this last year. closed dozens of brick-and-mortar outlets in the US and UK, including its brick-and-mortar bookstores, and closed some of its Amazon Go stores without checkouts. The Jeff Bezos-founded company is also in the process of shutting down its Amazon Drive consumer file storage service.
Andy Jassi, CEO of Amazon, explains the downsizing:
Last November, we announced the difficult decision to cut a number of positions in our devices and books divisions due to the current economic uncertainty. I also indicated that we have not completed the annual planning process and that I expect further job cuts in early 2023.