Amazon and the book trade

On the subject of books and Amazon, I just wanted to make a copy of a comment on this article ('Don't Support Your Local Bookseller: Buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you') in case I ever need to refer to these arguments again.

By the way, did you know that Amazon made a loss for 11 years after they first started up? They did that so that they could gain domination of the market – i.e., so that people would instantly think of Amazon whenever they wanted to buy a book/laptop/dvd/cat basket. 

And now it's worked. They are so powerful they can negotiate enormous discounts from publishers, and the result has been to discount the value of a book in customers' minds. As this article proves, they think that independent booksellers sell at a marked-up price and Amazon sells at the real one, when in reality Amazon can afford to sell at heavily discounted prices because they are such a large company they can absorb the loss, and independent bookshops sell books at a price that reflects the real price it costs to produce them. Having bought most of my booklist for university from Amazon, now I've found out more about them I'm making a real effort to use them as little as possible. I suppose that's one more thing to add to my list of boycotts – but it would be a lot simpler if companies could just be ethical. Too much to ask?

Also, can you imagine how much money they must have had when they first started up if they could afford to make a loss for 11 years? Part of my indignation here comes from jealousy. Anyway, here's the comment:

"MiraF

If you want to know why “Russo and his novelist friends” support independent bookstores, it’s because those tiny shops with their passionate booksellers are the only places no longer devaluing the book. Any author who spends months and years to create a book is going to avidly support a place that treats their work like a treasure instead of a commodity.  
 
Your post shows SUCH a lack of understanding of the realities of publishing and the market, it’s seriously horrifying. That so many people in the comments accept what you say and argue FOR it is heartbreaking.  
 
“no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books.” 
That is SO COMPLETELY UNTRUE. Amazon has devalued to the book to such a place that some people now expect a $2.99 MAXIMUM price point for their literature. You said yourself that paying $9 for a paperback is outrageous. But people pay that and more to go sit in a dark room and watch a movie for two hours. If, suddenly, the public consciousness shifted, and people were no longer willing to pay even $3 to go see a movie at the theater, how many movies do you think would be made then? How many theaters could survive it? By devaluing the book, Amazon has done more to limit publishers’ lists than any other company on the planet.  
 
“But ebooks!”  
I am a HUGE proponent of ebooks. But the fact of the matter is that the Kindle isn’t the holy grail of ebook readers. I think ebooks has done an amazing thing for the industry. I agree that most people who own readers buy a crazy number of titles each year—far more than they would physical books most times. But that’s not solely because of Amazon. In fact, a true book lover would never buy a Kindle, as it limits you to only being able to purchase ebooks from Amazon. Every other reader allows you to upload books from any ebook retailer online. Kindle is the ONLY reader that is exclusive to a single store. That is short-sighted and ridiculous in our global economy. 
 
“But they support self-publishing!!”  
Yes. They do. And how many people do you know who are willing to wade through that minefield of unedited, untested books to hopefully find a gem? And do we really want to become a society who cares so little for the quality of our lit that anyone with a computer can write the story of their life, put a price tag on it, and shove it up on the shelves? Even if you are one of those who care little for the quality of the books you read, you can never claim that Amazon actually SUPPORTS the author. Their latest offerings include giving self-pubbed authors a bite at a large pool of cash, if they agree to pull their books from all distributors who are not Amazon. In case you missed that, Amazon is requiring exclusivity of their self-pub authors who want to become part of their lending library.  
 
What you have to say about bookstores would be laughable if it weren’t so sad that you actually believe it. You say that Amazon has reviews and suggests books based on others you’ve read and the local store recommends what the employees like. Amazon’s customer purchasing based algorithm is no match for an actual conversation with someone who loves and is passionate about books. Independent bookstore employees are specialists. They read all the time so that they can understand genre and help hand sell. Amazon’s algorithm relies on sales data from other customers. How is that a better recommendation? 
 
“If you don’t choose your movies based on what the guy at the box office recommends, why would you choose your books that way?” 
Um… but random internet strangers writing reviews should be our guides? We all know how the Amazon review system can be used to game the system to support or destroy an author’s rating. We’ve all, by now, accepted that any forum open to the public invites trolls, false marketing, and other deceits. When having to choose between the guy at the box office and an anonymous internet stranger? I will always go with the recommendation of an ACTUAL PERSON.  
 
Put any number of authors in a room together and all will start talking about the amazing independent bookstores that helped to launch their careers. Yes, Amazon sells books. Yes, authors like places that sell their books. But most of all, we love people who match the hard work and passion we put onto every page with hard work and passion to put our work into the hands of people who will love the story. That is something we will lose forever if people like you allow words like “inefficiency” “cost comparison” and “more for less” to take over the literary landscape.  
 
Amazon truly is the WalMart of the internet. They are lowering our expectations and doing just as much damage to small business and local communities. I just hope that our society starts to fight back a bit before it’s too late."

"It's a moral dilemma"

I know my time could perhaps be better spent not reading terrifying articles on the internet, such as this one about honour killing I found through a link from one of my friends, but stories like these remind me that I really do want to do something that makes a difference in the world, and I'm not sure that publishing, if I can even manage to get into it, could ever do that.

I finally had the time to go into the Oxfam shop in Morningside yesterday, and I realised how much I miss volunteering there. Sure, you always get the customers that are real weirdos - inevitably, charity shops tend to attract them. But generally, the vast majority of the customers are friendly, and many are interesting if you can get talking to them. There are lots of reasons that someone might be shopping in a charity shop, and it's always interesting to hear them.

I also loved coming across hidden gems, especially when I was working in the stock room going through new donations. I love coming across books with the previous owner's name written inside the cover. There could be so many stories about that person. What did this book mean to them, how have they lived their life, what have they achieved, and why have they ended up giving this book away? What did it mean to them that it doesn't mean any longer? Pretentious, I know, but I find it fascinating.

And sometimes it was boring, when there was nobody in the shop for an hour and you had nothing much to do, sometimes the people were unfriendly or just busy, but at least it was something to do, and something that was worthwhile. At the moment I sometimes feel that what I'm doing is useless, and that if I wanted to get into publishing in any way, I'd have to move to London and stay there for the rest of my life. And I don't want to live in London. I don't like it and I don't know it. I don't even know where I'll be living next year - that all depends on things I can't control.

The problem is you don't get paid for charity work. So far, I haven't even been qualified enough to get a job in a shop, so who knows what I'll end up doing next year. I feel torn between doing something vocational and doing something worthwhile, and by worthwhile I mean something that makes a difference. Nothing that's worthwhile seems to pay enough, but even for something as seemingly harmless as publishing, I'm always worried that I'm selling my soul. Publishing is for profit. I accept that and I've always known that was part of the deal. What I haven't yet got to grips with is how to reconcile that with my values without selling out.

For readers with brains

I don't know if I said already that I'm studying an MSc in Publishing at Napier University. Well today (after a lot of confusion and delay) we had an exercise to make up our own magazine, thinking about the design, target audience, price, subject, tagline and title etc. I really liked the one our group came up with - it was called Real, and we never agreed on a tagline - my suggestion of "for women with brains" was deemed a bit too brutal. It was aimed at professional/career women in their 20s to 30s, and it was an anti women's-magazine magazine (i.e. against the mindless fashion obsession that most women's magazines focus on). It was about being happy with who you are, not about being aspirational. Somebody suggested that there was a gap in the market for younger women who want to read magazines that have substance, like Psychologies, but feel that those magazines are aimed at older women. To be honest, I would love to make this magazine a reality. We had all sorts of great ideas about what should go in it, such as having a policy of only using 'real' women who aren't airbrushed as the models, perhaps even using the readers (although we'd have to have some first). I suggested having articles on charity-shop fashion and upcycling, thrifty ways of making things unique, although that is a vested interest of mine, so of course I would suggest that. I don't know how appealing that would be to the general public. Other great suggestions were having a hard-hitting analysis of the news and current affairs, articles on new technologies, which are normally presumed to only interest men, articles aimed at addressing the culture of self-hatred that women's magazines engender, such as an article on enjoying your own company as well as relationship advice, a culture review section on the latest films, books, tv programmes and music, and an advice page with detailed response to letters. Overall, we wanted this magazine to have in-depth articles and features - we don't want it to be just another brainless fashion promotion. We thought about having adverts from affordable high-street shops like H&M, New Look and Zara. I don't know how ethical Zara is, however, and somebody suggested Primark too which I suppose might be inevitable, although I wouldn't be happy with that. If this was my magazine I think I would like to focus it on being ethical. The trouble is I don't know how many women would be interested in that. Anyway, we also thought it might be a good idea to have Lush advertise in it, as their cosmetics have such an emphasis placed on being 'real', organic, homemade, fresh and good for you. We came across a little problem with the adverts, though - would you have a policy that they couldn't be photoshopped either? Could companies deal with that? Pretty much everything is done in photoshop now, even if it's not airbrushing. That could be problematic.

I've just had the idea that you could do something similar to the thing they do in the innocent smoothies emails, where they include links to funny websites and weird videos. Pointing out websites like cakewrecks could be quite fun, and a good way of getting people to use the magazine's forums and extra video content it would have online. I'm actually amazingly excited about this magazine and quite put out that it's not going to become a reality.