The Book Depository online store is set to close its doors at the end of April, as parent company Amazon looks to reduce its overall costs. Customers and publishing partners were informed that the shop will cease its operations on April 26th. It is part of a wider cost-cutting measure put in place by tech giant Amazon, which has seen thousands of jobs being impacted.
The Gloucester-based business was founded in 2004 by Andrew Crawford, a former Amazon employee, and his business partner Stuart Felton. Amazon took it over in 2011, and the store has since expanded to open offices in London, Gloucester, Madrid, Cape Town and Chennai. The company posted a statement on its website, expressing their sadness at the closure. “We are sorry to let you know that Book Depository will be closing on 26 April 2023. We will still be delivering purchases and addressing any order issues for the next two months. From all of us at Book Depository we want to say ‘thank you’ – it has been a pleasure delivering your favourite reads since 2007.”
The closure follows Amazon’s plan to trim down its workforce in order to improve its finances. In January, it was confirmed that the books business would be part of the shake-up, which also included no longer selling magazines and newspaper subscriptions on Kindle e-book devices. Amazon announced that it was cutting more than 18,000 jobs worldwide, its biggest round of layoffs in history. CEO Andy Jassy – who replaced Jeff Bezos in July 2021 – stated that “these changes will help us pursue our long-term opportunities with a stronger cost structure.” In March, the company announced another 9,000 job cuts, as it continued to respond to the economic uncertainty.
