The Amazon dilemma

I'll admit it, I started out as a huge Amazon fan. When they first opened in 1994, they sold books, every book you could imagine, and that was all they sold for a few years. We did have a local bookstore back then (in fact, we had two, a B. Dalton at our tiny mall and an indie) and I bought books at those places, too. But as a nerd and a night owl, with small children to boot, I was so happy to have a place that was available 24-hours a day where I could browse books, order them at a discount, and read other people's opinions and reviews.

Back then it was a brand new thing that people could post honest reviews about what they were reading, and they did. A quite fervent bookish community built up--it was as if all of us introvert nerds had been waiting for Amazon. And then they came out with the kindle, and even though it took years, eventually I became a kindle convert (I've written about that before).

Our B.Dalton closed in the 90s at some point, and the indie soon after (I'm terrible at remembering dates, so that may not be exactly right). A lot of indies closed around that time, and although that gets blamed on Amazon, in my personal experience, a lot of them were on the verge of closing anyway, and they just used Amazon as the big bad guy excuse. I never got the sense that Amazon was purposely undermining local retailers. They offered a service, and made it convenient, and I used it.

But gradually that started to change. First there started to be fake reviews. Amazon changed the rules so that you had to admit it in the review if the review had been solicited, but still. There was no real effort on Amazon's part to stop people from gaming the review system, and as far as I can tell, there still isn't.

Then there occasionally started to be small "mistakes," like recently when the rating for a book in a popular author's catalog was incorrectly linked to a highly rated unrelated product. Oops! It was obviously a "mistake," but if you saw the 4.8 star rating and didn't click on the link and scroll down to read the reviews, you'd have never known. You'd just assume the book had a 4.8 (out of five) rating. Maybe it was an honest mistake. Maybe it wasn't.

And then last fall, Amazon "accidentally" shipped Margaret Atwood's new book a week early. Oops!! they said. Blush!! We screwed up! Technical error! But come on. They shipped thousands of copies of a highly anticipated book--possibly the most highly anticipated book of last year-- and nobody noticed that they were shipping it a week early? I don't believe it.

And they didn't stop shipping it, either, once it became clear what had happened. People who were anxious to get their hands on it canceled their local indie order and got it early. I know that happened at least once because I heard a woman sheepishly admit on a podcast that she had done it. (It was a podcast that I was trying out for the first time, and it was one of the hosts, and between that and the constant fake laughing, I've never listened to it again.)

Finally, I'm done giving them the benefit of the doubt. That was clearly an attempt by Amazon to undermine local independent booksellers. It made me a little sick to my stomach.

So what to do. I still live in a town without a bookstore. We have a wonderful local library, and I use it, but it's a small town library and their selection isn't always the greatest. I make my semi-annual trek to the bookstore in the next town over, and even though they rarely have what I want, I buy stuff to help keep them in business. I also buy books from indie bookstores when we're traveling.

But I read a lot. My current solution has been to order from other retailers. Powell's is good, and they ship promptly. Like Amazon, they stock both new and used books. I also paid the annual membership at Barnes&Noble so I could get free shipping from them. (How crazy is it that buying books from Barnes & Noble now seems like a subversive act? I seriously do not want Barnes & Noble to go out of business.)

When I use up my current Audible credits, I'm probably going to switch to Libro.fm, an audiobook site that allows you to buy through your favorite independent bookstore. (Audible is owned by Amazon.) Since I don't store audiobooks on my phone the way I store ebooks on my kindle, that won't be a difficult switch to make. And over a year ago, I stopped buying anything else (besides books, I mean) from Amazon unless it was something I couldn't get locally.

But I still buy kindle books from Amazon, mostly when they're on sale. I've got too much invested in my kindle to stop doing that, and I've never seen another e-reader that I like as well.  And honestly, I still sometimes buy other non-book things from them, too. It's convenient when you live in northwest Montana.

I guess I've reluctantly, imperfectly joined the #notAmazon crowd. I'm so disappointed in them. They used to be the shining beacon of what an internet retailer could be, but they've turned out to be just as coldly money-hungry and profit-maximizing as everybody else. Maybe they were always that way and I was just naive, but I'm telling myself that it's only been the last half-dozen years or so and I've just been slow to realize it. Good-bye, Amazon. I loved you while it lasted.