Booku ebookstore to close

21 June 2013 Books+Publishing

Online bookseller Boomerang Books has announced that its ebookstore Booku will close on 30 June.

In a letter sent to customers this week, Booku said that customers who have purchased ebooks from the site should make sure they have downloaded their purchases before 30 June. The ebooks can be downloaded to computers with Adobe Digital Editions or to devices with the OverDrive Media Console application.

Booku said in the letter that the ‘difficult decision’ to close the ebookstore was made ‘after much deliberation’. ‘Two years ago, we set out to provide an alternative ebook destination to the big boys—Amazon, Google, Apple—but we’ve come to the conclusion that it’s really, really hard to compete. Booku hasn’t been generating sufficient sales and it has become commercially unviable for us to continue to trade. The good thing is that we can refocus our efforts on making Boomerang Books a better business.’

Boomerang Books launched Booku in March 2011. The store is powered by OverDrive, which provides ebooks to Australian libraries and previously provided ebooks for the Read Without Paper ebookstore. OverDrive is the parent company of local ebook provider Booki.sh, which announced earlier this year that it will end retail sales from 1 July.

As previously reported by Books+Publishing, both Boomerang Books, which was founded in 2002, and Booku have been for sale since March. Co-owner Clayton Wehner confirmed to Books+Publishing this week that Boomerang Books is still for sale.

Category: Local news