hello hello books

But sometimes you can’t look away. It happened to me with the Gawker article that started the recent Amazon hubub. 

Since I’m busy running my very own small bookstore, it’s hard to find the time to long-form respond to this flagrant eff-you-and-all-the-hard-work-you-do message Amazon is sending—I direct you to the excellent letter written by Oren Teicher, the CEO of the American Booksellers association, for a response I fully endorse—but I can take a moment to give voice to concerns that arose while reading those aforementioned comments I should have stayed away from. 

There’s plenty of evidence that the choice to support businesses close to home helps the community that you live in. There’s also no doubt that Amazon is benefitting unfairly (and states are thus hurting) from the sales tax they don’t collect in 45 out of the 50 states, and possibly unconstitutionally from the sales tax they deign to collect in those other five. (Keep this in mind when you hit the long-unrepaired pothole on your drive to the post office to pick up a package from Amazon.)

Shopping locally shouldn’t be construed as a holier-than-thou move, just as choosing to use Amazon from time to time shouldn’t be painted with the devil’s brush. But we can’t fool ourselves into thinking that taking advantage of the exhaustive work that small retailers do to secure places for themselves in the community—including funneling more money back into those communities—and then literally selling them out to a behemoth of an online business is just a simple matter of capitalist consumer logic. 

Like many small shop owners, I consider the work I do fundamentally creative. I put a great deal of time, attention and heart into what you see when you visit my shop. “Curate” is overused these days, but it’s still a good word to emphasize the creative aspects of the work; a good day for me always includes a customer exclaiming “I didn’t even know this existed!” or “How do you find this stuff?” or “I really have to get out of here, it’s totally dangerous.”  

Further work & heart goes into my relationship with everyone who comes into the store; if you let me, I’ll get to know you through your reading life, and strive to find books and merchandise that resonate with you. 

Amazon asks you to ignore that work, that heart, that dedication to the local community. They ask you to take advantage of my knowledge & my education (which I’m still paying for) and treat the space I rent, the heat & light I pay for, the insurance policies I need to be here, the sales tax I gather for the state, the gathering place I offer, the books and book culture I believe in so much in that I’ve wagered everything on it: they want you to think of it as a showroom for goods you can just get more cheaply through them.

Their price check app isn’t new, but this reward for sending them information on how I price things, and for just buying through them instead, is new, and it’s reasonable for small retailers to be upset by it. Amazon knows we can’t compete with their price structuring, which itself relies on putting pressure on goods suppliers to give Amazon hefty discounts they can pass on; we don’t have those kind of bullying tactics available to us. We have to pay more to get those goods that you see in our shops, and the non-book items that bookstores sell are things we’ve often incorporated to help us stay afloat since fewer people actually, you know, buy books in bookstores. (And I also make it a point to support small publishers, local artists, and nonprofits; Amazon can hardly say the same.) This reward heaps insult upon injury; it seems like a direct message from Amazon to little businesses, and one that some of those Gawker commenters seemed to echo. 

We want you to fail, but it isn’t our fault if you do; it’s yours. The massive market share we have isn’t enough. More for us.

I try to treat everyone who walks through my shop doors warmly and respectfully; please have the same courtesy for me. We work hard to be here, but you aren’t legally required to shop at small stores. Choose Amazon if you must; just don’t use our shops to aid that choice. 

—Lacy