BookPeople Sells eBooks. All of them.

There’s a common misconception that indie bookstores hate eBooks and want nothing to do with them. Even worse, there’s the misconception that the digital age of reading rules out indies entirely, that to use your eReader you have to forsake your local bookstore.

Well it’s not true.

Independent bookstores like BookPeople are made up of people who love to read books. Period. Whatever the format, print or digital, we support reading because we believe it’s through reading that we come to know ourselves, our world, and each other in a way we never could alone. Has it been easy to embrace eBooks? No, it hasn’t. It’s been a period of adjustment, as it has been for publishers and big chains like Barnes & Noble. But we by no means have ignored one of the biggest innovations in books since the printing press.

BookPeople sells eBooks. All of them. At the same prices you’ll find anywhere else, including Amazon. You can search and download your eBooks from our website, www.bookpeople.com. We participate in every eBook sale out there. Because of the agency model by which publishers sell their eBooks, every retailer has to sell them at the same price, no massive discounting allowed (unless the publisher has a big sale, in which case, those discounts are available at every retailer, no matter how big or small they are.)

And now, we’re excited to announce that not only can you download your eBooks from bookpeople.com, you can also read them on an app designed specifically for indie bookstores. The IndieBound Reader is now available for any device running Android 2.2 or later (and will soon be available for iPhones and iOS devices) and allows you to set up the application so that it always downloads eBooks from your favorite local bookstore (cough, cough, BookPeople, cough, cough). The app will store your ebooks for you, display them, and of course open them so you can do the most important thing – read them! You can search, browse and buy eBooks from BookPeople on your device (excluding the Kindle; you’re eternally bound to Amazon with one of those) as easily as you can buy and read them from any other eBook retailer.

You can take a look and download the new IndieBound Reader here.

We believe in two things here at BookPeople: the importance of reading, and the importance of keeping our community strong – economically, intellectually, in every way that we can. If you are as passionate about our Austin community as we are, and you love your eReader, it should come as great news that you can support your local community bookseller and rocket right along with the digital age at the same time.

We’re studying up on the ins and outs of the new reader and will be happy to field any and all questions you have about it, and about how to download your eBooks from us in general. Because books, in any format, are our heart and soul, and we’re dedicated to helping you find exactly the right one, however you prefer to read it.