Shelf Talkers Anonymous

In the publishing community, there has been a lot of talk lately about Barnes & Noble’s announcement that they will not carry the print copies of any books published by Amazon. People are split over this: some are on B&Ns side, some are on Amazon’s. The major argument against B&Ns decision is this: that by not carrying books, they are sending customers to their competition in order to get those books. The average person on the street doesn’t know the different between once publishing company or the other—chances are they aren’t going to know when they walk into B&N that the book they are looking for was published by Amazon. And that average person is going to walk away disappointed when their local bookstore doesn’t carry that book. So why even bother putting up the fight against Amazon when B&N is going to have to cave in, in order to maintain customers?

Because someone needs to stand up for bookstores, and I applaud B&N for doing it.

As a bookseller at Powell’s I’ve seen over the last six months the effect that Amazon is having on bookstores. Fewer and fewer people come in to buy books at full price, either because they know that Amazon can offer it cheaper, or because they’ve switched to an e-reader and they aren’t aware that they can get e-books from Powell’s too. So many people look at the cover price on a hardcover book and go white (I know I do too sometimes). It’s hard to imagine paying $28 for the new Janet Evanovich book, or $35 for the new George R.R. Martin. But when you love books, you love a series, you love an author, the question of price becomes less of an issue. And for those true book lovers, they should be shopping at a bookstore (local independent or B&N) instead of on Amazon. Because Amazon is going to kill bookstores.

If bookstores just roll over and let Amazon win, this is what the world is going to lose: that physical, brick and mortar, place where you can walk in and scan the shelves; where the employees have read the books and can offer their opinions and suggestions (more often indies than B&N); where you can bump into fellow book lovers and maybe meet a new friend or discover a new book; where you can come away with a book that you don’t yet know is going to be your favorite, and you can hold it in your hands as you head home, wondering what’s in store for you inside those pages.

Amazon tries to offer some of these things. You can read reviews, see what other people are buying, but it’s not the same. And Amazon isn’t interested in furthering the world of books. They are interested in making money. They could care less if the quality of fiction goes down and down until all people are reading is mediocre trash. As long as it makes them money.

We need bookstores and bookstore employees and bookstore buyers who actually care about the books they are buying (and yes they care about costs too). We need those places where book clubs can meet, where authors can do readings, where friends can meet and talk and exchange. Our whole culture is built on stories, and in the last several hundred years we have made the book that focal point of how we learn and thrive as a culture. To undermine and undervalue the book the way Amazon seeks to do is disheartening.

I was never against buying books from Amazon before. I took advantage of their ability to offer new books at lower prices to save me some money as a poor college student. But not anymore. From today onwards I will no longer buy books from Amazon (textbooks aside because that is a whole different story). And hopefully others like me who make this choice will help save the bookstore, even if all we save is the memory.