Amazon donates £250,000 to help bookstores through coronavirus

The Book Trade Charity said the online titan made the donation on a “low-key” basis, but yesterday revealed that Amazon was the mystery donor.

It came after the charity started a fundraising drive to help booksellers facing financial difficulties after being forced to close their doors amid lockdown.

The charity’s chief executive David Hicks told the BBC: “Amazon came to us and said they would like to put some money into our fund, particularly to help at this time, and that they would prefer it to be low key.”

But it revealed the identity of the mystery sponsor following a report in trade publication The Bookseller, which stated that £250,000 of the £380,000 raised had come from a single source.

Hicks admitted some booksellers would find the donation difficult, but emphasised that the Book Trade Charity existed to help the entire industry, from publishers to bookshops.

He said he was “conscious that that does give a little bit of difficulty to some booksellers”.

Hicks added: “A large part of the trade, particularly on the publishing side, works very closely with Amazon, but the bookselling side does have rather a more strained relationship.”

Details of the donation emerged as Amazon braced itself for thousands of its higher-paid workers to stage a ‘virtual walkout’ today.

The protest has been organised by the Amazon Employees for Climate Justice group, amid concerns that warehouse staff are not being given adequate protection against coronavirus.

The group has urged people in technology roles, many of whom are working from home, to call in sick today and take a “paid day off in protest for our warehouse colleagues who often do not get paid leave”.