Brazilians have been enjoying the exact same setup for more than a decade. The estante virtual (virtual shelf) site is exactly that, a single store front where you can search and buy books which are fulfilled from indie bookstores throughout the country. In our case, since books are often rare and expensive, the website is mostly focused towards the second-hand books market (which is huge in Brazil, specially academic and specialized books) but it also sells new books.
I'm sure other countries have similar setups. I've heard that in Germany, Amazon never really got that much of a foothold as there is a system of fulfilment between the various bookshops where you can order on your local shop and have the book arrive there in couple days from a different unrelated shop using the same system.
It always surprise me how American tech ecosystem reinvents the wheel from other countries and then proceed to make huge deal out of it as if they invented sliced bread all over again. If people looked away from the U.S. and into home grown, grassroots, little tech startups from different countries, they'd find a plethora of new ideas and solutions.
Amazon is absolutely dominating in Germany. Although what you otherwise said is true, we could also always order via ISBN Numbers from any small bookstore, there just wasn't a good way to search before the internet became mainstream.
I moved to Germany about two years ago from the US. I have used Amazon a lot to help me get settled here. I’d like to move away from them but English books seem like the hardest thing to find off their platform. Do you know of an alternative?
Use amazon search/reviews and then use the ISBN to shop anywhere (I would promote Buch7 as a social book shop knowing its not the best for English books). Your local book shopde will also order most things for you. (Call them, they call you back when the book arrived). The big problem is that English books are not fixed price in Germany ...
I'm sure other countries have similar setups. I've heard that in Germany, Amazon never really got that much of a foothold as there is a system of fulfilment between the various bookshops where you can order on your local shop and have the book arrive there in couple days from a different unrelated shop using the same system.
It always surprise me how American tech ecosystem reinvents the wheel from other countries and then proceed to make huge deal out of it as if they invented sliced bread all over again. If people looked away from the U.S. and into home grown, grassroots, little tech startups from different countries, they'd find a plethora of new ideas and solutions.