Why does Shellf default to Bookshop.org instead of Amazon?

Every book in Shellf has Buy buttons. If the book exists on Bookshop — and you are in the UK or US — then the Bookshop link will be active. If not, the Bookshop buy link will be disabled.

For Amazon, we provide the book title in the search URL so you land on a listing page.

It isn’t an anti-Amazon stance. Shellf’s pitch isn’t “leave Amazon”. Many readers live in Amazon’s ecosystem — Kindle, Audible, Prime, existing reviews on Goodreads — and Shellf isn’t trying to push them out of it.

It also isn’t a guarantee that Bookshop’s prices or delivery times beat Amazon’s — they sometimes don’t. Shellf is choosing the affiliate-revenue path that funnels back to indie bookstores when it has the option, not making a price claim. Amazon just serves a lot more countries and has a larger catalogue.

Long-term, Shellf is supposed to fund itself entirely through affiliate book purchases. The economics: if a reader buys a handful of books through Shellf’s Buy links each year, the affiliate revenue covers the inference cost of their AI recommendations and the running cost of their account. If that model lands at scale, the Plus subscription tier goes away entirely and Shellf becomes free for everyone.

That’s the bet, anyway. It depends on (a) enough readers actually using the Buy links and (b) enough of those purchases converting at the retailer. Both are still being validated. In the meantime, the Plus tier exists as a safeguard against runaway AI costs.