Saving the Little Bookstores of America: A Rejection of Amazon

Yesterday I read a really fascinating article (see link below) about Amazon.com and how destructive

this website has been to the little bookstores that have been around for years in the United States. A book lover like myself might be biased, but this article stirred up my interest and I thought others should know why.

Americans love all things fast; all things convenient and especially, all things cheap. Our restaurants brag that they are all three, and goodness help you should you take more than a few minutes preparing that oh-so-cheap food. Now, don't get me wrong, having my McDonald's snack wrap in four minutes flat always makes me a happy camper, but this article startled me a bit, and American as I am, my love of bookstores overtook my desire for convenience.

In this article, writer Albert Wu, says that "From its inception Amazon has sought to disrupt the traditional bookselling market. The tactic is simple: undercut the competition, selling books at a loss if necessary, while building up a huge customer base and using it to mine salable consumer data, cross-market other products, and leverage industry prices. The plan has succeeded brilliantly; current estimates are that Amazon sells about half of all books sold in the United States." So what? Right? So, what if a successful company has taken over most of the book sales in the U.S. Why does it matter?

I'll tell you. It's about culture and everything that the little bookstores of America have brought to their cities throughout the U.S. They are places where in this busy, loud, chaotic world a person can slow down a bit, have a good conversation, search through shelves of novels, or just sit and read for awhile. It also has to do with the little guy, the small business owner. My own father, the Clock Repairman, has a little store tucked away on a city side-street where he fixes, by hand, people's clocks and watches. Much like him, these bookstore owners do their work on a smaller scale and for many it is a labor of love. Their stores are little hubs of barely surviving culture, containing the writings of men long gone, but whose thoughts still impact the society we live in today.

Amazon is close to smothering these happy pockets of a barely hanging-on industry, that of the bookseller. These little shops are becoming fewer and far between. So, I've decided, and I hope you do to, to buy my books in future from the little guy. Try to find a bookstore in your area. Go there for your purchases and maybe it will be a bit more expensive, but trust me, it's more satisfying to hand a real, caring person your money and receive a crinkly bag full of paper treasures, than to simply stare at a computer screen and punch in a credit card number.

Or, if you don't find what you're looking for locally, try one of my favorite sites: http://www.abebooks.com/ Abebooks is a site with thousands of booksellers from across the country, listing their books usually at very good prices.

Also, take a look at the article that inspired this whole rant: https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/browsers-welcome



 
 

Ramblings of a Bibliophile

Do you love the smell of musty old books? Do you drink it in like a new perfume? Would you rather spend an afternoon leafing through volumes of poetry and turning the crackling pages of worn novels, than sifting through racks of clothing in a mall? If so, my friend, you are most definitely a bibliophile, a lover of books. Now, don't get me wrong, I like shopping as much the next girl, but for some reason I'd rather sort through labels that say "History," "Fiction," and "Russian Literature" than ones saying Aeropostale, American Eagle, or Gap. I prefer used bookstores to new as well. For me,  there is something magical about volumes of books that have to be searched through, gingerly picked up, and lovingly cared for because they've already been passed through several other sets of hands. 

I recently made a visit to my favorite bookstore. Located inside of an old tobacco warehouse, the wooden floors are creaky, the musty book smell perfect, and it's shelves are full to the brim with every genre you could think of. It really is better than any mall.

Driftless Books

Perfection.

At the end of an hour of ecstatic exploration, I managed to come away spending under 20 dollars for a beautiful copy of Shakespeare's collected works and a book containing two of Steinbeck's novels. This bibliophile couldn't be happier.