'Amazon without Amazon': one-hour book delivery service launched

NearSt, a new platform to order titles from local bookshops - and get them to customers within an hour - begins in London

At Ink@84, an independent bookshop in Highbury, north London, an order pinged in on Thursday morning for Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. The Pulitzer prize-winning bestseller was then to be delivered to a nearby customer within 60 minutes - by NearSt, a new platform that is offering one-hour delivery for books across London, as well as the facility to browse your local shops with your phone.

Almost 40 bookshops are now on NearSt's newly-launched platform, which allows customers in London to enter their postcode and the name of the book they're looking for on the site or app. They can then order the book for instant collection from a local store, or have it speedily delivered. Entering Joe Hill's post-apocalyptic thriller The Fireman for my home address in Kilburn, I'm told I can either walk nine minutes to a local shop, Queen's Park Books, where it will be reserved for me, or have it delivered within the hour.