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.
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.”
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 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.
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?
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
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.
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?
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".
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.
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.
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.
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?
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).
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
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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
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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.
My local library had their seasonal used book sale last Thurs - Sat, but I sense that was simply coincidence.
Which is to say, almost nobody cares.
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.
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?
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".
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.
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.
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.
Its a business. How could you expect it to exist without being profitable?
Maybe they could transition to charities.
Furthermore, I'm NOT evaluating them only on money terms. I was very clear that they provide value and I want them to continue to exist.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
Of course piracy is cheaper lmao
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.
It's not like they're having a Pope Francis Funerary Sale, there's nothing offensive or distasteful about this.