The bookshop.org NOligarchy Profile
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bookshop.org earns a NOligarchy Score of 88.23 out of 100 — a strong result driven by an essentially clean political record and a spotless regulatory docket, tempered by an estimated executive pay gap that the company, as a private business, has no obligation to publicly disclose.
Current Pillar Scores
Political Access
96.5
Wealth Extraction
59.2
Playing by the Rules
100.0
Score history — 23 quarters
Tier bands show where each quarter's score falls — no numeric y-axis needed. The dashed ring marks the year-over-year comparison point. Tap any quarter but the first to see its pillar breakdown.
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Political Access Grade: 96.48/100. bookshop.org filed no federal lobbying disclosures and operated no Political Action Committee (PAC) during the tracking period. The only political spending on record is $1,600 in individual campaign contributions by employees who listed bookshop.org as their employer — a negligible sum by any measure.
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Wealth Extraction Grade: 59.47/100. No stock buybacks or dividend payments are recorded. The score’s drag comes entirely from an estimated CEO-to-worker pay ratio that, while not publicly required of a private company, benchmarks poorly against what a fair split might look like.
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Playing by the Rules Grade: 100.0/100. No regulatory fines, penalties, or legal judgments appear on the public record.
The Sector Context: bookshop.org ranks 12th out of 15 among companies sharing its federal industry classification (Book retailers and news dealers). Its score of 88.23 sits above the sector average of 83.5, meaning it outperforms the baseline — but eleven peers score higher, several of them by meaningful margins.
The Bottom Line: A Near-Spotless Record Held Back by One Invisible Number
bookshop.org shows up in Washington with virtually no fingerprints — no lobbyists, no PAC, no revolving-door hires — and it has accumulated zero regulatory fines from Q3 2024 through Q2 2026 (8 quarters — the two-year tracking period). As a private company, it paid out no dividends and made no share buybacks. The single factor pulling its score below the top tier is an estimated CEO pay gap: industry benchmarks suggest the person at the top earns roughly 182 times what a typical frontline worker takes home, a figure no public filing is required to confirm or contest.
No Footprint in Washington
bookshop.org has not hired a single lobbyist, retained no outside lobbying firms, and established no PAC. The Lobbying Disclosure Act (LDA) database shows zero filings during the two-year tracking period. There are no former government officials on the payroll parlaying political connections into regulatory access.
The only political money connected to the company is $1,600 in personal donations made by employees who listed bookshop.org as their workplace — $1,500 in Q1 2026 and $100 in Q2 2026, per Federal Election Commission (FEC) records. These are individual contributions, not corporate money; they reflect personal choices by staff, not a coordinated company strategy to gain access.
For a business built explicitly as a counterweight to a corporate giant, the silence in Washington is consistent with the brand. bookshop.org’s network multiplier — a measure of how many other large companies share its lobbying firms and thus amplify its influence indirectly — is zero. It simply isn’t in that game.
An Undisclosed Pay Gap
bookshop.org is a private company, which means it is not required to publicly disclose its CEO pay ratio. The best available figure is 182:1, based on AFL-CIO Executive Paywatch industry benchmarks for comparable companies in this sector. That means the person running bookshop.org is estimated to take home roughly 182 times what a typical worker on the floor earns in a year — a gap that, while not confirmed by any filing, places the company in line with industry norms that most workers would find striking.
No stock buyback or dividend data is recorded for bookshop.org across the two-year tracking period. As a private company, it has no publicly traded shares to repurchase and no shareholder base demanding quarterly distributions. That absence removes one of the most common mechanisms companies use to redirect earnings away from wages and toward capital owners — but it doesn’t tell us what the company chooses to pay its workforce in absolute terms, a figure that also goes undisclosed.
A Clean Record on the Public Docket
bookshop.org carries no regulatory penalties, no court judgments, and no enforcement actions on the public record during the two-year tracking period. Its Playing by the Rules score is a perfect 100.0 out of 100.
No subsidy data is on file either — no state or local government grants, tax credits, or economic development incentives appear in publicly tracked sources for this company.
For a business of its size operating in a sector where labor violations and consumer protection fines appear regularly among larger retailers, an empty docket is notable. Whether that reflects genuine compliance, limited regulatory scrutiny of a small private operator, or gaps in public tracking is not something the available data can answer.