IndieBound is a website that helps connect people to independent bookstores.
Why am I putting this link up?
Because this nonsense between Amazon and MacMillan is the latest in a long history of corporate warfare that results in hurting writers more than it does in hurting the corporations involved, and despite what the Supreme Court said recently, corporations are not people. Corporations are enormous digestive tracks that use people for nourishment. They take them in, churn them up, dismantle their constituent parts, and shit out the excess they don’t use. We really ought to get over the idea that corporations are good citizens. They are not. That many of them do beneficial things is not at issue—the fact is they are not designed to do beneficial things and if they do such things it is only because it is easier for them to function by so doing than otherwise. The instant it becomes in their best interest to function maliciously, they do.
Political screed done. For the moment.
This situation is directly impacting authors. You can’t go buy certain books from Amazon because Amazon is having a control dispute with a major publisher. John Scalzi has a very sensible recommendation at his site. He is dead on, I think, about the idea of boycotting as a useful tool. That just hurts authors more. What needs to be done is for people to pay more attention about who they buy from and how that money funnels through the serpentine system to the people who need it.
Go find an independent book dealer. I mean it. Get off you duffs and go to a bookstore. You do two things that way—you support a local business and you keep money going, eventually, to a writer. This is important for two reasons.
The first is, the fewer independent book dealers there are, the more entities like Amazon can control our book buying choices, which eventually leads to their controlling the publishing scene in general. We’ve already been through all the nonsense of superchains becoming so powerful that they can dictate what books publishers buy. It hasn’t resulted in quite so dire a situation as the doomsayers predicted, but it’s been bad enough. The publishing model in the last thirty years has changed so much that many previously supportable authors can no longer publish through national or global entities because the numbers mitigate against them. You might feel that this is only natural, since if something doesn’t sell, maybe it ought to be left to dwindle away. As far as it goes, this is true, but we haven’t been talking about work that doesn’t sell for a long time, we’ve been talking about work that doesn’t sell well enough, and the fact is the numbers are partly arbitrary and partly tied to leveraged debt. If corporate stomachs hadn’t gone through a massive period of cannibalism and gobbled each other up in leveraged buy-outs, the debt burden of the resulting super stomachs would not be so high that previously moderately-selling authors could no longer get a slot in the next catalogue. This situation is not helped by near-monopoly command of market-share by a small cadre of retailers.
So go support a local bookstore.
If you really don’t want to get out of the house and visit a brick-and-mortar store, many of them nevertheless have online sites and you can buy from them that way. It may not be as cheap as Amazon, but paying a little extra can start to alleviate the situation where publishers can’t make enough from the retailer (Amazon) to keep many of those authors on their lists.
On that aspect, go find some small press sites and buy books directly from them, bypassing the retailers entirely. Small press is the future of independent publishing. They need your help. If you don’t want to do that, order small press publications through your local independent bookstore.
Corporations are very efficient at making it easy for you to screw your longterm benefit by buying from them. Mind you, when I say “Corporation” here, I’m not talking about a mom-and-pop shop that is doubtless incorporated, making them, legally, A Corporation. I mean those entities that are large enough to be commonly known as corporations. You all know who they are, I don’t have to list them.
Start by going to IndieBound and setting up some accounts with some folks who know what a book is all about. It may seem like a struggle over a just cause, this frakkus between Amazon and MacMillan, but believe me, MacMillan isn’t getting pissy over ebook pricing because it wants to give the authors a little extra. These are just two big dinosaurs ripping at each other, unconcerned about the scurrying little mammals trying not to get crushed in all the stomping.
Oh, the second reason buying local is a good idea? Getting out of the house occasionally is good for you. Especially when it’s to buy something as important as a book from a real live flesh-and-blood human being. It’ll keep you from being digested by a corporate stomach, at least in this instance. And who knows? You might decide to start doing all your buying locally. And that can’t hurt.
