The Venn diagram of people who make book purchasing decisions based on “Independent Bookstore Day” and people who choose Amazon because a book is a couple dollars cheaper on a given day has to be two completely separate circles.
I'd be very curious to know how many people here actually knew that Independent Bookstore Day was a thing before reading this headline.
I just checked the two independent bookstores nearest me and neither one of them has any mention of it in their online presence. I've been a frequent customer of independent bookstores for years and never heard about this before. There's no Wikipedia page and Google Trends tells me there's not enough data to even give me a search history for this.
It makes a great headline and I'm sure the people who organize it are annoyed, but this might just be a case of ant meet boot. It's weirdly reassuring for organizers to think that Amazon specifically targeted them, but it seems more likely that they just... didn't even know it was happening.
Blackwing pencils produce a special edition every year that is only available in independent bookstores starting on Independent Bookstore Day. That’s how I knew about it.
Do you know if everyone listed on Blackwing’s store locator carries these? The closest to me isn’t a book store.
I am aware of it and have been for more than a decade but… I only ever remember sometime after it’s passed. Every year. I’ll spot the leftover merch at my preferred bookstore the next time I’m there and go “Oh, right.”
Dedicated web page: https://www.indiebound.org/independent-bookstore-day
IIRC it started at about the same time as 'Indie Record Store Day'; both are on Saturdays in April.
I shop at brick-and-mortars for whatever I can, and very much regret those gone missing because of the Great Monopolist. I really valued being able to examine many products before purchase.
I buy plenty of books - 2x to 3x more than I can read - and I had no idea there was such a thing.
My local library had their seasonal used book sale last Thurs - Sat, but I sense that was simply coincidence.
Why do you buy more books than you can read? :)
The most valuable book in the world isn't the Gutenberg Bible or First Folio or signed Principia. It's the one you need at 2 o'clock in the morning but don't have.
Well, now significantly more people know. Use Bookshop.org to buy books instead of Amazon, there's no real downside in my experience, and the quality/integrity of the books I get is much higher.
I just tried the first two titles I thought of on both.
Art of Electronics, Bookshop.org $128.70, Amazon $94.03 (list price $117)
SICP, Bookshop.org $90, Amazon $53.77 (list $75)
Both Amazon titles will be in my hands tomorrow for no additional shipping cost to me. Bookshop suggests that for SICP if I pay $8 extra, I can have it expedited (3-6 days) or for $9 extra can cut that to 3-5 days with priority, though there is a free shipping option available (with no timeframe indicated).
SICP comes up on Amazon when searching for “SICP”; it does not on Bookshop.org, so I need to search by the longer title.
In case “nerd books” is a particularly weak spot, I tried the first book on NYT Best Seller list, Perfect Divorce. Bookshop $28; Amazon $21 and they can have in my hand between 10 and 3 today.
As a consumer, I see at least two hard downsides (cost and speed) and one soft downside (selection/browsing ease).
Amazons worst contribution to the world was leaving people with the expectation that they need to have 2 day shipping for every single item they purchase. The climate impact alone is insane.
You can try
Https://thriftbooks.com
Admittedly, they’re not Amazon fast. But using their Wish List scores me plenty of great deals on things I don’t need ASAP.
Pro tip: For used stick to Like New and Very Good. I’ve had bad luck with Good, and have never tried below that.
Thanks! That site is far more competitive than Bookshop.org and is in the neighborhood of Amazon price-wise on 2/3 of those titles.
Amazon Thriftbooks Bookshop.org Title
$94.03 $94.52 $128.70 Art of Electronics
$53.77 $89.49 $ 90.00 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
$20.98 $22.97 $ 27.89 Perfect DivorceBetterworldbooks is also very good for used books especially textbooks but more generically anything
While that's probably true the optics are pretty obviously terrible.
I don’t think anyone who isn’t looking for something to “ah-ha!” Amazon with is going to bat an eye at this, and those ah-ha! People aren’t into convincing people to change their mind, they are more into echo chambers.
I can only speak for myself but it looks pretty bad to me. I'm not particularly interested in "ah-ha!" I even shop on Amazon fairly frequently.
If Walmart engaged in a price war with a small mom and pop bakery across the street I would be similarly unimpressed (disgusted, really).
The entire business model of Walmart is to underprice mom and pop bakeries.
The entire business model of every business is to do more business than their competitors.
This sentence does not say any more than commenting on burglary to say “everyone tries to get resources for themselves”.
A small bakery cannot engage in price manipulation for a meaningful time or volume to oust competition, that activity is completely different category.
But the problem with burglary isn't the resource acquisition, it's the burglary. Amazon is fundamentally performing the same act as the independent bookstore, they're just doing a better job.
Anyways the fundamental problem with most bookstores that aren't Barnes and Noble is that they all do a terrible job of having the things I want to read. When the local artisan bookstore won't bother to stock RA Salvatore or even fucking Tolkien because it's too "low brow" I don't have a whole lot of empathy for them. I actually do enjoy bookstores when they aren't merely a far more inconvenient way to order books from a large corporate distribution center.
"If"?
I find the opposite to be true - purported book lovers complaining about a book sale is not a good look in my opinion.
it will certainly be an exhibit in any future Amazon ant-trust case
How so?
There is no anti-trust law saying you can't have a sale the same day your competitors are having a party.
The people who care about the optics is probably exactly overlapping those that care about independent bookstore day.
Which is to say, almost nobody cares.
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Complaining about "the optics" is the worst because it basically says "there is no substance to my complaint and yet I will persist to complain"
Yeah, Amazon did a shitty thing. What are you gonna do about it? Nothing. Because the only reason you (an indie bookstore) are angry in the first place is because you have no control or leverage in the first place and you feed on the crumbs that Amazon happens to miss by vacuuming up the rest of the market by being so much better than you at actually being a store— like a entity that holds stuff and distributes it.
The value as a 3rd spaces inde bookstores provide to their communities are so crazy disconnected with their revenue model I'm amazed they've lasted this long. Your average inde bookstore isn't actually good (meaning core competency in a market) at anything they try to charge for. They're not good at being a store, they pay retail for logistics, they have no leverage with publishers, if they have food it's usually worse than the restaurant next door, if they have coffee it's usually worse than the starbucks across the street. The advantage of having boutique collection of books you can't get anywhere else evaporated when Amazon has every book in existence. Revenues for rare books evaporated thanks to ebay.
Possibly if like me they read e-books not actual books.
When making my pros and cons list of where to move to a few months ago, "has Amazon" was very high up my list (sorry Tblisi!) and "good independent book stores" was not on the list.
It’s like Amazon could fire their union-organizing employees on Labor Day and people would just be happy they can still their jelly beans delivered same day.
"It is rather pointless to argue with a man whose paycheck depends upon not knowing the right answer."
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An indie bookstore is really just a crappy captilalist spin on a library. Complaining about Amazon is like pot calling the kettle black.
You are 100% correct and the downvoters don't want to admit that there is NOTHING uniquely better about small business/companies vs big business/companies. Often big companies pay better, have better WLB, better safety/compliance, etc.
There's a reason Marx calls them the petite-borgeious.
> there is NOTHING uniquely better about small business/companies vs big business/companies
You don't think being an owner close to customers and employees has impact on the customer experience compared to being a cog in a corporate machine driven by metrics providing "customer service"?
Economies of scale allows for cheaper consumer prices, but at the cost of the middle class. The rise of Walmart is the death of small businesses and is a symbol the lost opportunity of The American Dream.
But we get more affordable stuff on average, so there is that. The continued loss of the middle class is bad for everyone, but you also can't blame consumers because they should find the lowest price.
I mean I don’t see Amazon as “pro-independent bookstore” so this doesn’t change much imo
Who's more independent than Amazon?!
In context, "Independent" just means small scale. You can nit pick about definitions, but i think its well understood by the people involved.
I had the same thought too, they are the original, independent, online book store. Sure theres share holders and they have business verticals now but - I wouldn't say any outside interest interferes with daily operations at AMZ storefront selling books - just because they scaled off that..
The irony I had in mind when I made that joke was Bezos prostrating himself before Trump. The richest people with the most to lose really are the least independent people alive, regardless of whether they are connected to the traditional book publishing and distribution establishment.
Almost everyone? Amazon has duty to generate profits for massive amounts of shareholders, you can't be very independent when you are public with high market cap, there are just too many literally invested in what you do.
If you own a small shop, you are completely dependent on serving your customers. They will not buy the books you like, they will want the ones they like.
That is what we mean with indie though, just being dependent on selling to customers and not other things. Amazon is not indie, there are way too many people holding a stake in Amazon.
I'm just looking for a book and it was on sale for Amazon at a cheaper price than elsewhere. Although it's a different edition and the flexible cover, I'll gladly pay a few bucks more and buy it in a local library. But I do have considered Amazon since when you search for the book is one of the first results
Maybe your characteristics are too specific. Make it a venn diagram of people buying books and people sceptical of amazon and caring for vivid suburbs.
I would match both, and i think most people on HN do too, but how many of you go out of their way (town) to avoid amazon or any large online-only distributor, like me?
If all independent bookstores went out of business today, and all their business flowed to Amazon, that's probably what, 0.3% of extra revenue to Amazon?
Amazon could probably make it 0.4% if they sold knock off copies of the actual book you want.
They already do... The Amazon prints are often done on inferior paper and don't feel as nice when holding them.
Yup, and they still feel the need to do it anyway, that's sort of person you find high up the management chain at Amazon...
> and they still feel the need to do it anyway,
Or the Occam's Razor explanation that they weren't thinking about it at all, because customers who shop based on Independent Bookstore Day are a very different, negligibly small customer base who weren't going to be spending their money at Amazon anyway.
Looks like Amazon has been running a book sale once a year around spring.
From 2024: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/books-and-authors/amazon-bo...
I'm pretty sure C Suite and upper management took some under graduate courses at some point and all know about Occam's Razor. They probably hold meetings on how to use it to their advantage to continue to enrich the company.
Books are so irrelevant to Amazon at this point that this type of decision would never make it near the C suite or upper management.
Since it's not for economic benefit, what motivates such action?
First order effect: lose money. Second order effect: undercut independent book sellers, drive them out of business, win all the money.
World domination is often just about seeing a bit beyond the obviousness-horizon that otherwise limits us all.
Wasn't that already done for 20 years? If the remaining indie customers are not buying books from Amazon, as stated in the venn diagram comment at the top of this thread, they won't be affected by this sale.
You're forgetting the group of people who want to be readers, but just plain tend to forget that books exist.
I keep a big "todo" list on my phone for movies, series, and books: every time I come across something which looks interesting, it gets added to the list. But I don't actively take the time to actually purchase anything from it, so it tends to be forgotten.
If I were to hear about "Independent Bookstore Day" on a Saturday morning, there's a pretty good chance that would remind me that I have a lot of books to buy, and drop by my local bookstore to buy some. If I happened to be shopping on Amazon and saw a big book sale, I would probably be reminded that I have a lot of books to buy, and see if they were discounted.
But if I just purchased a bunch of books from Amazon, I would no longer be going to buy those same books during Independent Bookstore Day, and I would be unlikely to splurge on another pile of books from my local bookstore. In other words, my local bookstore is missing out on sales because of Amazon undercutting them.
The trigger isn't "support your local bookstore", the trigger is "books are a thing you can buy".
You heard about it on a Sunday morning today; how many books are you buying from your local bookstore?
I don't really see what is wrong with this.
Of all the questionable things amazon does, having a sale hardly seems like one of them. I dont think amazon is under any moral obligation to respect their competitors marketing moments. Just like how if an independent book seller wanted to have a sale during "prime day", that would be a-okay.
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The real problem is not this. It is the fact that Amazon can pay almost zero taxes on its online business, while a normal bookstore has to pay taxes like everyone else. That's unfair competition.
Is this still the case? I thought Amazon started collecting (and paying) sales tax years ago. It was a big deal at the time. Are you referring to something else?
Probably referring to amazon's large expenditure for which they use to offset their taxes - but these are legitimate expenditures (such as operating costs of a fleet of airplanes, warehouses, other expenses that could be considered as growth expenses).
No, the common criticism of Amazon (and companies like it) is that they cut deals with governments and/or use sneaky international accounting tricks (such as the famous "double Irish Dutch sandwich") to pay very low rates of tax relative to their profit (not revenue).
For example, Amazon UK paid zero Corporation Tax in the UK in 2023[0] despite recording £222m in profit. Meanwhile, a smaller UK bookstore has to pay 25% CT on its profits - and it can't afford the army of lawyers and accountants it would take to avoid this. And since Amazon is paying less tax, it can sell its books more cheaply, undercutting the smaller competitors.
Some might call this unfair. And I'm inclined to agree.
But to be honest, I still buy books off Amazon even though it makes me feel slightly icky. What's a boy to do?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/01/amazon-uk...
>No, the common criticism of Amazon (and companies like it) is that they cut deals with governments and/or use sneaky international accounting tricks (such as the famous "double Irish Dutch sandwich") to pay very low rates of tax relative to their profit (not revenue).
>For example, Amazon UK paid zero Corporation Tax in the UK in 2023[0] despite recording £222m in profit.
But if you read the article you linked, you'd see it's a pretty straightforward investment deduction, rather than some dastardly tax evasion scheme? Amazon might be still doing the "double Irish Dutch sandwich" or whatever, but the article makes it clear that most of it is coming from investment tax credits.
>Amazon’s main UK division has paid no corporation tax for the second year in a row after benefiting from tax credits on a chunk of its £1.6bn of investment in infrastructure, including robotic equipment at its warehouses.
>The government’s “super-deduction” scheme for businesses that invest in infrastructure was introduced by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor. It allowed companies to offset 130% of investment spending on plant and machinery against profits for two years from April 2021. Amazon booked a credit of £1.13m in 2021 under the scheme.
What taxes are meant here? This is always the weird part. I understand circumventing various location specific taxes or getting special deals. But taxes are paid on profit. And just as any company if there is no profits there is no tax.
And independent bookstore could use the profit they make to say remodel their store. And inside certain rules that would be legitimate expense. And they would not pay tax on it.
From what I hear, Amazon was losing money for many years, and they got to use tax laws to offset those previous losses. And that was quite a few years ago, and they have been paying a decent amount of taxes for a while. Of course, they can utilize all sorts of credits as allowed by the law.
If you have a problem with the law, call your senator, instead of ranting on a forum.
(I have nothing to do with Amazon other than being a shopper there and own some stocks via VOO.)
it's not that they were "losing" money, they just funneled all of their massive would-be profits into artificially making prices as low as possible so as to destroy competition and retail
It would be nice if local, independent bookstores continued to exist but if the economics dictate they dont then I dont see any reason to hate the company that can still viably sells books.
That first sentence is a not a throw-away. I hope local, independent bookstores can continue to exist. And also that brick and mortar book stores continue to exist. But it's not like Amazon is illegally colluding to keep them down. independent bookstores just arent a very profitable businesses.
Sorry, this is an extraordinarily blinkered view. Why must they be evaluated purely on money terms? Having local independent bookstores enhances the quality of living for an entire community, and places like Amazon and Walmart make them desert zones. Does that not bother you?
> Why must they be evaluated purely on money terms?
Because it's a business providing a consumer good - not a public institution.
> Having local independent bookstores enhances the quality of living for an entire community
How do they do that? They don't help me because they don't carry books I'm interested in at prices I'm willing to pay. It's serving so few people in the community it can't pay for rent.
Public access to books is subsidized already through libraries.
As a counterpoint, I've visited a few smaller towns that used the local government to keep big box retailers out. It's generally an hour or longer drive to the nearest one and as a result main street remains alive and well.
Which is to say that the marketplace as a whole exists for the benefit of the public. The entire point of regulation is to remediate issues that competition alone fails to address.
This is about online vs retail in a space where the online version has clear advantages for the consumer.
We don’t need to prop up an inferior (worse selection, higher price) book industry.
> Which is to say that the marketplace as a whole exists for the benefit of the public.
That’s a more generous characterization than I would use. Once again, if I’m forced to use worse goods at higher prices thats not a benefit to me.
I wasn't arguing against online retail. I was responding to your first point about businesses versus public institutions.
> if I’m forced to use worse goods at higher prices thats not a benefit to me.
Not all benefits are first order effects. Presumably you appreciate your local environment not being full of heavy metals despite the fact that remediating toxic waste increases production costs.
> Not all benefits are first order effects.
I agree with that. And there are certainly negative second order effects of Amazon.
> Presumably you appreciate your local environment not being full of heavy metals
I’m just not agreeing that big business = evil and environment destroying and local business = good and sustainable
I’ve had good and bad experiences with both and have no evidence that local business is immune from bad incentives.
But why is that better? If you talk to people in towns like this it turns out the locals buy everything they can online and then are generally mad about overpaying to buy from the local small shops. So they travel an hour every couple of months or so to restock everything non-perishable and freezer friendly so they don’t have to get ripped off.
This isn’t “smaller towns beating big corporations with the local government”. It’s “business owners in a small town stop competition using local government lobbying”.
It isn't necessarily! But the alternative is hardly pretty either. Surely you've seen the aftermath of a marginal town where the local economy was replaced by one or two large retailers?
In both cases you'll be able to find people who complain bitterly about the status quo. The fairness of the local politics will vary but at the end of the day if the majority of the population were truly unhappy with the situation presumably the officials would be voted out.
Are there things I miss about book stores? Yes - the atmosphere and serendipity. Also notice that many know that - and have shifted their business to coffee house, etc providing the atmosphere.
And I can still get those experiences when I go to a towns that have a unique book store.
I don’t why this was such a key institution that needs to be subsidized. We may have fond memories. If you’re just generally lamenting that good times have changed - I’m with you. But we can’t just mandate that the world stops changing.
Can you name the towns? Which towns do you think we should be using as examples of this economic policy?
Because thoughts and prayers don't pay the rent? If they did enhance the quality of the community, they would be patroned at a level that sustains them. If you simply enjoy knowing a local bookstore exists as a storefront in your downtown district, maybe you could rally the community to subsidize their economics like a park or swimming pool, and perhaps you could even rent books for nearly free - just stamp the back.
Ill agree, for me the value add of a local bookstore is they curate the books to some extent. I’ve gotten a fair number of “recommended books” and they’ve generally been good (I tend not to trust Amazon reviews, and they own goodreads now too). This one does author talks which I tend not to go to but is a community building kind of thing.
The Amazon editor picks are pretty good IME.
I wonder about that. I ponder what Amazon's book selling sector (and really the whole part where it sells things) would look like without the money printing machine of AWS. If Amazon didn't have that would they really be able to do what they do and burn the industry down.
I don't disagree that bookstores are probably not that profitable, but I do think that Amazon is taking all the oxygen out of the room and not necessarily by being better, but have having a dragon hoard of cash that probably wasn't generated by selling books.
Can we be a little annoyed if a big company that can leverage publisher deals, massive amounts of analytics and loss leader tactics actively try to cut off business from smaller companies?
When a sizable chunk of the people on this site are trying to grow their idea into a big company that can leverage deals, massive amount of analytics and various tactics to cut-off business from the competitors?
Is that really a large chunk of us? Or is it just a loud chunk?
It could be either but I think silence is harder to spot amongst the loudness.
So my Prime membership is coming up soon. Had it at least 10, maybe 15, years - since that start.
I got a Costco membership last month. That with Instacart has been working h out very well.
I’ll use Amazon here and there but I’m making a big switch and canceling.
This was decided before this move, but it makes me feel much better in doing so.
I'm with you on Costco, but Instacart is much worse than Amazon.
I signed up for them a few years back, just a month or 2 before their union busting. I was very angry in my cancellation message because I think it's a great service, but if they're scared of their workers organizing I'm not interested.
I bailed on Prime as well, after the whole Washington Post debacle.
My Prime membership has been really useful for me too, but I constantly read things that bring me on step closer to hitting that cancel button too. Good for you.
What are you doing with the membership that is making it so sticky to not move elsewhere?
Buying things online? Have you tried purchasing from anywhere else? The level of convenience is night and day.
Can't say for USA, but in EU if I want something I can find at least 5 online non-Amazon stores that sell it. Often times they are also cheaper. I refuse to buy anything on Amazon anyway, don't even have an account and I can still get my stuff.
B&H is good for what they carry, and has two day shipping.
As someone who avoids purchasing anything from Amazon like the plague - B&H is great alternative. I have a set of "shops" that I rotate through depending on the product type:
Electronics - B&H
Computers - Microcenter
Musical Gear - Sweetwater (even though they got bought out by private equity, my sales agent always tries his best to do right by me)
As others have said, nothing for me has come close when it comes to reliability, variety, shipping times and ease of use.
I really don’t think they’re paying attention (or anyone, for that matter). Independent bookstore day isn’t a real holiday and it’s just a marketing fever dream
In India Amazon makes little sense. Neither does kindle nor does local book store.
The reason for this is that both paper and printing here is cheap along with labor. The original author also licenses for cheap. The publishing houses however take a large cut increasing the cost of the book.
People get a hold of the epub and print them and sell them for 1/4th of the price sometimes 1/10th for new and even less for used.
The only way I see around this is digital libraries. Let people rent unlimited books (but like Netflix limited at a time) and take a monthly cut.
Paper, printing, and labour have nothing to do with the price of the book. Like college textbooks and drugs, you can sell in India if you mark your prices in accordance with what the market can afford. Otherwise, people will pirate.
That's essentially Kindle Unlimited. It's one of the key pillars to Amazon's dominance of the publishing sector. As an author, you have to give them 3 months exclusive publication rights to use it. You get paid per pages read, divided among all the other pages a customer reads that period. And if you opt out, your book's distribution on Amazon is affected.
Well yes, piracy is always going to be cheaper.
Similar to how Prime Video doesn't work in many Latin American countries that have poor internet and sneakernet of hard drive swapping with piracy.
Of course piracy is cheaper lmao
> In India Amazon makes little sense. Neither does kindle nor does local book store.
Of course! The number of books outside educational material sold in this country with huge population is insignificant. And it is not much surprise since most people can't really afford much.
But at least mobile data is really cheap and Whatsapp is free, so people get all the information they care about just from this combo.
I dont enjoy going in bookstores; i'd rather order online. What's the big deal exactly?
Interesting that Amazon claims this was "unintentional" - I wonder how many other major retailers mysteriously schedule their biggest sales to overlap with their competitors' special events?
Should Amazon care more about:
A) Books?
B) Bricks and mortar book retailers?
C) Customers/readers?
Silly. Growth.
Trump / Bezos 2028!
Make suburbs great again!
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In new England at least, independent bookstores appear to be thriving. The town I'm in (population ~12K) has at least 5 independent bookstores, all in a town with a great library. That's an unusually high number of bookstores but most of the larger towns have at least one independent bookstore.
I read far too many books and had never heard of "Independent Bookstore Day".
The entire article sounds like an excuse for cheap shots against Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
I will never buy books from a bookseller or bookshop that thinks it is acceptable to behave like this : "Leah Koch, owner of the Ripped Bodice, in Los Angeles, California, kept it simple: “Fuck Jeff Bezos,” she told Variety."
And here in Australia brick and mortar bookshops tend to carry popular rubbish that I would be ashamed to read.
I would be really surprised if Amazon didn't have algorithms running that price matched other stores automatically.
> (In a statement to Variety, Amazon said, “The overlap was unintentional. [...]
So then they are having urgent meetings on "how did we possibly mess up this one, and look like jerks"?
Or is someone getting their bonus or promotion for being aggressive?
Amazon knows about the day. Amazon has third party independent sellers. Amazon decided this was a good opportunity for them and their marketplace.
It's not mysterious. It hurts small stores that aren't aligned with Amazon and helps Amazon and small stores aligned with Amazon. Looks like typical Amazon bullying which has already been accepted since nobody is challenging the passthru book marketplace. Amazon used to sell books though, so that matters?
Amazon has many employees, it's certainly possible the one that picked the dates of their book sale wasn't aware of this other event.
After all, last year they didn't overlap?
bullying? sounds like standard capitalist market economics to me.
Yep. Biggest marketshare will have the largest presence, after a certain size. Then they will always eat the little ones. Standard capitalist market economics. Amazon will benefit more by copying the little market innovations. This is an aspect of bullying.
There are definitely people in Amazon who are aware of this, but do not want to get themselves in trouble for talking out loud, because this is not their responsibility. I would have done the same thing.
Sounds like someone skipped out on exercising Ownership, Bias for Action and Earn Trust.
Yeah, I think it would be more like “Well, we didn’t plan on being a jerk, but we like it!”
"We don't pay attention to the book trade at all for over a decade -- random books just show up in our warehouses, and then money appears in our bank accounts -- so we didn't know about the annual independent booksellers event, and nobody told us."
"Our elite data scientists built an inscrutable deep neural network to predict and maximize sales opportunities and this is what it told us to do, we will swear complete innocence up and down"
Large corporations don't make off-the-cuff comments on viral controversies. If Amazon made a statement to Variety, there were definitely urgent meetings about the issue before that statement went out.
One thing they would have concluded pretty quickly, though, is that there's no way for a large corporation to win a public argument with random small bookshops. If it was in fact inadvertent, writing a fact sheet with detailed refutations of every argument that they acted in bad faith would just make them look obnoxious. So Amazon says what they think is best to say, independent bookstores say they don't buy it, and that kinda has to be the end of it.
Meh. I live in a poorer area of the UK. We don't have indie bookstores any closer than a 45-minute drive away, and I'm lucky to have a car.
When the kind of people who run "indie bookstores" come and set up in areas like mine instead of staying in their twee suburbs and posh little towns, then I'll start using them and stop using Amazon. Until then, Amazon are the people democratising access to book shopping, delivering fair-priced books to people regardless of where they live, not to mention the convenience of Kindle.
While I don't shop at Amazon and it's a company I will not support if at all possible, are we really criticizing them for having a sale at the same time as other stores? In what universe is that offensive?
It's not like they're having a Pope Francis Funerary Sale, there's nothing offensive or distasteful about this.
Everytime i scan hackernews and see this on the main page, I have the compulsion to check amazon for a deal. Can we take it down or just admit it's working in Amazon's favor?
I don't get why do people love independent bookstores.
For me, locally - those never have anything else than top books on selling lists, selling them for the stock price. I am not a rich person and I can't justify paying ~ 30-40% more just to support them.
This entire story is based on the very questionable assumption that Amazon did this deliberately, for which the evidence is slim.
I mean, there are tons of reasons to dislike Amazon, without looking for something this thin.
That thumbnail is chef's kiss
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The problem is you go to an independent bookstore do they have lots of Isaac Asimov? Nope. They just have some very niche books, some virtue signaling books and the top best sellers and lack any sort of deep collection of classics. They also generally lack the important computer science publishers as well like Manning and No Starch Press. Just doesn’t compare when you used to be able to go to Barnes & Noble or Borders and scope out books in person and they would have a strong collection. Online is currently the way to go currently.
Go to a library. It's like people have forgotten they exist. They certainly have Asimov and European classics. If they don't have something physically in print they can usually get it for you electronically.
The worst library is still better than the best corporate bookstore.
> The worst library is still better than the best corporate bookstore.
We are talking about book stores, meaning there is a desire to own the book being read. You don't get to own the books in a library. As someone who heavily annotates my books—except fiction—I will need to own a physical copy (or a digital edition). I haven't been to a book store in a while, but I recall the last two times being quite disappointing. Meanwhile, on Amazon, or other online providers, I can find what I need more often than not.
Most libraries will let you buy any book. Just don't return it and they'll bill you and it's yours. Easy peasy.
FYI, Home Depot will sell you a box truck for about $44k; which I think is a pretty good deal.
The trouble is although you get billed for the book, the library does not replace it. I've had things on hold get cancelled with a note about "no longer available".
I've bought a lot of books from the thrift store that had library stamps in them.
It's very possible they don't replace them, but many libraries also have legitimate sells to clear books from inventory to make room. Usually over like a week or three day weekend once or twice a year, the last day having bags of books for $5. All of them have stamps/card holders/stickers designating the library. So those don't necessarily mean they were borrowed and never returned.
You may be right, but I wonder why they would remainder a book that was on hold.
Depends heavily on your topic: There are many situations where all bookstores, even Amazon, will come up short. Studying history, for instance, it's amazing how often the main branch of my local library has books even third party sellers in Amazon won't offer, or where they'll demand outrageous prices.
Still, for availability, the real winner is the not-necessarily-legal archives where you can find, say, OOP foreign books that I'd have to cross an ocean to find in a library.
I love libraries and use them for most of my reading, but around 30% of the books I want they just don't have in the system (I read some more obscure/older titles so it's not surprising). So I'm happy Amazon exists for those.
Or just by from the place that is both the cheapest and has the best selection ... ?
Oh trust me, not all.
"They certainly have Asimov and European classics."
I live in a top 5 city in Poland. My local library *has only school readings and harlequins". Interlibrary loan or anything else? Nope, they don't offer that.
This is why Amazon started as a bookstore. Jeff Bezos didn't just happen to like books. It was meant to sell everything from the start. Rather, he started out with books because he identified it as an area where an online marketplace solves a problem that a physical store cannot.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM&pp=ygUWQmV6b3MgZWF...
Yeah, the irony is that there was a competing online bookstore at the URL books.com, which was later bought by Barnes & Noble.
When I bought my copy of Peter Karow's _Digital Typefaces_ the proprietor asked if I was in a hurry to receive it, and if not, if it would be okay if he reviewed it first to see if it was something he would want to purchase.
Local bookstores by me are definitely lacking on textbooks and such, but Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, and new SF writers are pretty well represented (there's definitely plenty of romantasy too)
Really depends where you live. Obviously if you live in tech hub cities you'll do better than other non hub cities.
Some recommendations: Seattle has Ada technical books. Portland has Powells. Strand in NYC has some technical books. and in Boston MIT Press Bookshop is gold. There are others.
And the miracle of websites is that you can have the selection of Portland or Boston without going there.
That can't be provided by every local book store.
Powells shut down their technical bookstore a while back
Also depends on your definition of and reaction to "virtue signaling books".
And a desire for a deep collection of classics. It’s really not just a whistle at that point, is it?
MIBGA
ZNGTS
> when you used to be able to go to Barnes & Noble
I recently went to a relatively new Barnes & Noble in a growing flyover state city, and was very surprised at the way this location felt like Borders or B&N 20+ years ago.
No substantial sign of the bookstore -> big giftshop with books trend I felt like I'd seen everywhere over the last decade. Very substantial selection of books, pretty sure I saw an Asimov title and some Manning.
This was in an area with a lot of growth (and tech expansion specifically), but chances are slim you've even heard of the city unless you've lived in this state (one not even in the top half of populous states in the US).
It's especially interesting considering that B&N owns their stores (no franchisee/indie optimism in play here).
Not sure if it's a trend, but it was a good experience!
I live in one of these cities and the local B&N is frozen in time - in a good way - and it is always packed with people.
It has just as much space devoted to books as it did when it first opened over 30 years ago. Lego took over a few aisles, but the original Software Etc. section is now all books - a net zero change.
Other than that, it hasn't changed one bit. Frozen in the early 1990s. Original wallpaper and everything. It even smells the same.
When our friends and family visit, they all demand to visit this holy site - and they always leave with bags full of books.
James Daunt took over: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2023/apr/15/barnes-and-nob...
If there is one kind of book you can count on finding at local used book stores, it's mass market paperback sci-fi and fantasy. You really cannot have picked a worse example than Asimov. 90% of the Asimov I ever read (which is quite a lot) was from local bookstores, both new and used.
The trouble these days isn't finding paperback sci-fi in used bookstores, but finding used bookstores at all in the first place. They stills exist but not in the numbers they used to. If you just look up bookstores on Google maps, many of the results are coffee shops that have a single bookshelf just for the aesthetics of nominally being a bookstore. You know a real bookstore because the shelves are cheap and mismatched, with as many crammed into the space as they can manage. That's what happens if they're trying to make ends meet by buying and selling books, rather than printing money selling coffee and ambience to laptop workers.
I've bought a ton of used scifi from thrift stores. But after the pandemic, that all just dried up. I wonder what happened?
I've noticed that a lot of the used book sellers on Amazon are Goodwill affiliates so maybe they all shifted to ecommerce or are bulk selling books to ecommerce companies.
Not sure where you are but the libraries where I am are pretty good about having the stuff you seem to be looking for.
B&N are still around and doing good now. Focusing more on unique stores specific to their community ans hosting local events, etc. Also trying to stay out of markets already served by other bookstores.
My local bookstore has several -- https://www.portersquarebooks.com/search/author/%22Asimov%2C...
I think citing the bookstores of Camberville might be cheating in this case. Off the top of my head I can think of at least half a dozen that are well-stocked with Asimov titles. Not sure the same could be said for elsewhere.
There are no bookstores in Camberville, because Camberville is Trina’s and only Trina’s, everything else is Cambridge or Somerville.
Never been to Powell's, then? If B&N or Borders had been run like that, I might have liked them.
Well... Powell's in Portland is the largest independent bookstore in the world. I don't think any bookstore can be compared to them.
And even Powell's doesn't have everything (say Tyler Cowen's reading list). I know because I've asked at that little desk on the 1st floor that gives out slips, and they couldn't help me out.
How do you know Powell’s is the largest independent bookstore in the world?
(It’s great, regardless, having been there myself.)
McNally Jackson in NYC is also great.
Yet y’all will continue to spend your money there
Yep. Because they offer highly competitive pricing and most items are delivered next day. Both are big factors for me in choosing where to spend dollars and Amazon continues to be the market leader at each.