Bookindy allows you to browse for books on Amazon and buy them from your local indie bookstore/

Want to browse on Amazon but buy locally? There’s a Chrome extension for that.

The extension has the unfortunate name Bookindy, but it serves a great purpose: allowing online buyers to see whether the book she’s after is in stock at a bookstore nearby. It allows price-comparing, and even offers a delivery service from local stores.

The only catch? It’s UK only. For now.

In a piece for Medium, Will Cookson writes:

I think we do care about local independent shops but we’ve turned into lazy, laptop-in-bed, impulse purchase type people, who crave convenience. If we are to buy from independent bookshops again, we’re not going to change our ways based on pangs of guilt or a sense of obligation. We demand something as convenient as Amazon. We demand something that gives us the choice of where to buy a book from with no extra effort.

With this in mind, I asked myself the question:

Can you promote local independent bookshops on the very system that’s designed to destroy them?

You can investigate for yourself here.