READ / REBEL
WHO WE ARE: READERS, REBELS
READ / REBEL is an affiliate of Bookshop.org that promotes revolutionary reading. We curate lists of popular and academic non-fiction, and fiction, that challenge the status quo and help create a shared community of ideas for feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, anti-ableist, anti-homophobic, anti-capitalist rebels. As an affiliate of Bookshop.com we are helping to create a more vibrant independent bookseller community and, unlike Amazon, we put our profits back into the world.
WHY WE USE BOOKSHOP.ORG
Bookshop.org is a revolution in the online book-buying business. Whereas Amazon.com has cornered the market and been willing to lose money in order to outcompete brick-and-mortar bookstores, especially indie bookstores, Bookshop.org partners directly with indie bookstores and put money right back into the book-selling community. By buying through a Bookshop.org affiliate you are sticking it to Amazon's monopoly and putting more money back in the hands of bookstores, authors, and, in the case of READ / REBEL, service and activist organizations.
Bookshop.org is an online bookstore with a mission to financially support independent bookstores and give back to the book community. We believe that bookstores are essential to a healthy culture of readers and writers. They’re where authors can connect with readers, where we discover new writers, where children get hooked on the thrill of reading that can last a lifetime. They’re also anchors for our downtowns and communities.
As more and more people buy their books online, we wanted to create an easy, convenient way for you to get your books and support bookstores at the same time. As more and more people, groups, and publications link to big online retailers to earn affiliate commissions, we wanted to offer one that allowed them to support independent bookstores at the same time.
We hope that Bookshop can help strengthen the fragile ecosystem and margins around bookselling and keep them local bookstores an integral part of our culture and communities.
WHERE THE MONEY GOES
As a Bookshop.org affiliate, READ / REBEL receives 10% of the sale of books through our online bookshop; all of that money goes to service and activist organizations working toward equity and justice.
Proceeds from sales go to different organizations based on two factors:
(1) If the book appears on a specialized list (see below), sales percentages go to the specific organization named in the list.
(2) All other profits are donated to different prison book projects on a rotating, biannual basis.
READ / REBEL's designated recipient of "all other profits" for Jan-June 2020 is the Appalachian Prison Book Project.
In the name of absolute transparency, READ / REBEL will post biannual reports of sales and donations, detailing sales by list and donations by recipient. At present, Bookshop.org is too new to have paid out revenue to affiliates.
In addition to providing revenue to READ / REBEL that is returned to the community, Bookshop.org sales put more money into the pocket of the author by cutting out Amazon and other wholesaling middlemen who reduce profits to publishers and, ultimately, authors.
READ TO (BE A) REBEL
READ / REBEL is a project organized by critic, writer, and editor Sean Guynes. The READ / REBEL logo is an engraving from an International Workers of the World poster c. 1917; the header image is an engraving showing a scene from the Haitian Revolution, published by the British Library Board.