Websites

A bookshop you
own outright

The marketplaces rent you shelf space and take a cut of everything on it. Your own site is the one place a sale is worth full margin, the customer is yours, and nobody changes the rules on you in a quarterly email.

Secure checkout Works on any screen Search built for books Accessibility & GDPR

Two ways to launch

Template or bespoke

Both get the whole storefront. The difference is how much of it we design around you, not which features you are allowed.

$699 one-time setup
Octavo Quickstart

Our framework, personalized to your shop and launched quickly. You bring the look you want and the books; we build the layout and then teach you to run it yourself.

View pricing
From $999
Folio Custom

For shops that need a design of their own, custom feature work, or an integration with a new-book supplier. Our design team, or bring your own designer and we will work with them.

See the gallery

Searching a bookshop

Search that knows what a book is

General shop software searches a product name and a description. Yours searches author, title, publisher, place, date, edition, binding, condition and keywords, because that is how someone looks for a book they half remember.

Categories and online catalogs give browsers somewhere to wander, and a customer who lands on a book that has sold gets shown what else is like it rather than a dead end.

Trade
fields, not retail ones
Catalogs
for browsing, not just search

Yours to change

Edit the site without ringing us

Pages, text, images, events and the front-page carousel are all yours to edit. Put up a fair announcement on the morning of the fair. Turn on a vacation message before you go rather than emailing support from the airport.

We train you on it at setup and we do not charge for small changes you make yourself, because you making them is the point.

You
edit the content
Included
training at setup

The parts nobody asks about

Infrastructure you should not have to think about

The unglamorous half of running a shop online. It is included, it is maintained, and it is the reason nobody has to call anyone.

Being found

Sitemaps and structured data

Sitemaps, rich snippet markup and structured data are generated and kept current, and Google Analytics and Search Console connect in a couple of clicks. Your books get indexed as books.

Domains and mail

DNS somebody will help you with

We manage DNS for hundreds of bookseller domains, whether the records live on our servers or somewhere else. A, CNAME, TXT, MX, SPF, DKIM and DMARC, set up properly so your mail arrives.

Compliance

Accessibility and GDPR

Platform updates are reviewed for WCAG accessibility, cookie consent is built in, and customer accounts are designed for GDPR. The rules keep moving and keeping up with them is our job.

Included

The whole storefront

Every website gets all of it, templated or custom. There is no tier where the good features live.

Templated or custom design
Works on any screen
Secure cart & checkout
Site & advanced search
Categories & catalogs
Featured items
New arrivals
Front page carousel
Content editor
Events calendar
Blog & press pages
Coupons & site discounts
Gift cards
Currency converter
Shipping rates & zones
Multi-state sales tax
Vacation message
SSL included
Accessibility (WCAG)
Cookie consent (GDPR)
Analytics & Search Console
SEO & sitemaps
Multi-user admin
DNS & email records

Why it matters which one sells it

The sale you keep all of

Routing can hold new stock back from the marketplaces for a few days, so it appears on your own site first. The books that sell in that window cost you no commission at all, and the customer who buys them is yours rather than the venue's.

Your shop first
A delay you set, before the venues see new stock.
No commission
A sale on your own site is worth full margin.
Your customer
With an email address you are allowed to use.
Want to see what yours would look like?

Look through what other booksellers are running, or talk to us about your own shop and we will tell you honestly which of the two builds you need.