August 06, 2008
August 6th, 2008: Boycott Amazon
I’ve long ago committed to buying a majority of my books at independent bookstores and I’ve mostly stopped linking to Amazon here in favor of linking directly to publishers even though that takes a bit more time (in fact I have mostly used Amazon lately just for its wishlist feature or publication information). I love the prices but after a while I realized that those discounts come at a cost: partly the value of selection of independent bookstore owners – I know when I walk into BookCourt or Three Lives that someone there has chosen interesting things that I might want to know about – but also the influence that Amazon wields in the book trade in general.
Dennis Loy Johnson, founder of Melville House Publishing first explained to me about the difficulties of dealing with the Amazonians several years ago, but it seems their dirty dealings never end. According to The Bookseller.com Amazon is fighting with Hachette Livre to extract more discounts from the publisher and has REMOVED THE BUY BUTTON from their titles on the site (this is, I understand, on the UK Website). Can you imagine walking into your favorite bookstore, picking up a title and heading to the cash register and being told “No. We won’t sell you that book. The publisher hasn’t given us a big enough discount.” I would walk out and never come back.
An article at The Society of Authors sums it up:
In order to bring pressure to bear on Hachette, Amazon has been removing the ‘buy button’ from some books and also taking some titles out of promotional positions. Authors are very concerned that they will be losing sales as a result of the hostile action by Amazon.
Tim Hely Hutchinson made a persuasive case for standing firm. Discounts to booksellers have been increasing by 1% per year over the last 10 years and this has had a major impact on authors’ royalties.
As seems to be company policy, Amazon has been remarkably uncommunicative, so it is impossible to assess the merits of its arguments (which presumably are linked to the much larger discounts available to supermarkets).
From what I can tell (see more at this International Herald Tribune article) this is common practice and I don’t see how on earth it benefits readers or writers. So that’s it. Unless I see something from Amazon proving that this is somehow justified I hereby boycott Amazon.com and suggest you do to.
p.s. If you want to read about Amazon’s early days, check out the memoir by my friend James Marcus, Amazonia.
Comments
Frown? What happened to boycott?
– Mat (08/06 06:18 PM)
I was trying to play off the image, but it did seem tepid. you’re right - I changed it back.
– Bud Parr (08/06 09:43 PM)
You make a good point. In spite of the fact that I just bought one of Amazon’s Kindle things. I wrote a webblog post about it earlier today—the link to my webpage shows it. I live in Georgetown, and can walk within minutes to a number of independent bookstores. Ordering from Amazon is just laziness—bring it to my door because I am a lazy f**ker. Put me on your list and count me in.
– Donigan (08/19 06:46 PM)
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