When Andy Hunter was looking for US$1.2 million to create Bookshop.org, "It was actually an extremely lonely experience because I was wandering around New York City talking to big agents, like publishers, high-net-worth individuals or investors I thought might care about bookstores.
"And almost all of them were like, ‘Oh, you're competing with Amazon? No, sorry, can't do it right now.' Or they didn't return my emails or whatever. And I ended up raising about 60 percent of what I wanted to raise and launched with only $775,000 worth raised. Which is very small amount of money if you're trying to create a platform that's going to compete with Amazon."
Hunter, a canny and committed co-creator and/or publisher of Literary Hub, Counterpoint, Soft Skull Press, and Catapult, is lonely no more.
