My publicist got me an interview with Mario Toneguzzi, and it was well-written and generous, covering my own recent novel, but also mentioning my two businesses, an independent bookstore and a small literary press. I was pleased.
Until a friend who read the piece said: “too bad all the books you mentioned were directly linked to Amazon.”
WHAAAATTT?
Here I am, talking about my own book, which I’d like people to buy at my bookstore, or any independent bookstore, for that matter And the article directs readers to Amazon? Grrrr!
In the article, I also mention a title that was a bestselling book for my publishing company. After this book became a hit, we had terrible difficulty getting Amazon to stock our wares, to the extent that the author of said bestselling book eventually left us and went to another publisher who was large enough to get Amazon’s attention. In an article by George Packer a few years back, Jeff Bezos was quoted as saying something like “the attitude of Amazon toward a small publishing company should be like the attitude of a jaguar toward a wounded gazelle.”
The third book Amazon provided an unwanted link to was – TA DA! : The Bobbsey Twins. I am not kidding. The interviewer had asked whence came my love of books and reading, and I gave a shoutout to my mom for reading tales of Nan and Bert, Freddie and Flossie to my brother and me at bedtime when we were little.
In my book club, when someone decides not to buy our next book in a bookstore but to order it online, I turn to them and ask “do you really want to put another nickel in Jeff Bezos’ pocket?”
I found another lengthy piece in the New Yorker this fall, in which the author quotes a law professor at Columbia as saying “Amazon is a microeconomist’s wet dream. It you’re a consumer, it’s perfect for maximizing the efficiency of finding what you want and getting it as cheap and fast as possible. But, the thing is, most of us aren’t just consumers. We’re also producers, or manufacturers, or employees, or we live in cities where retailers have gone out of business because they can’t compete with Amazon, and so Amazon kind of pits us against ourselves.”
(From “The Unstoppable Machine” by Charles Duhigg New Yorker, October 21, 2019)
It’s an interesting way to present the dilemma. That the frictionless and cheap online shopping offered by Amazon causes us to make choices that undermine, damage, even destroy the things we truly value – our communities, our social lives, our choices, the very quality of our lives.
I’m also so pleased with myself for eschewing anything on Amazon Prime. I was so pleased with myself for ordering books only from Abe’s, never Amazon. Until a friend told me that Amazon had bought Abe’s. So then I tried EBay. Nope. Amazon owns that too.
I’ve got a new book out, and it would be great if I could promote it on Good Reads. But I can’t. Because Amazon owns it.
And who knows? Maybe the LL Bean plaids I just ordered directly from their website will come to me via an Amazon fulfillment warehouse.
Frustrating as hell, is Amazon.
