The CEO of the American Booksellers Association posted an open letter on the current events in the bookselling world.
Oren Teicher briefly touches upon J.K. Rowling news and Jeff Bezos buying The Washington Post. However, the bulk of the letter was an angry rant toward Amazon.
Here’s the crux of the argument:
You and your bookselling colleagues know the real narrative of the Amazon story, but it’s important that we keep in mind the viewpoint and experience of our customers. Amazon’s public message of low prices and wide selection are, regrettably, the only story that many consumers know.
You should take the opportunity to read the whole letter here. Teicher points out recent reports on Amazon done by the Seattle Times, Fortune and the Financial Times that look at Amazon as a whole.
However, the letter is all about making Amazon look bad.
Studies by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and others have shown that Amazon’s practices are detrimental to the nation’s economy. Indeed, macro analysis shows that for 2012 alone — using Amazon’s own numbers about its increase in sales — Amazon cost the U.S. economy more than 42,000 jobs.
I found another article on the web from Publishers Weekly crediting the ABA as saying the Institute for Local Self Reliance said “that every $10 million in spending that shifts from Main Street to Amazon results in a net loss of 33 retail jobs.”
I’m not on either side of the argument. However, it seems some balance is needed in all this. There has been a lot of anger thrown at Amazon in recent months and sometimes it feels that it comes from frustration more than anything else.
Bezos took advantage of an opportunity and seized it. He built Amazon from a small entity and built it into the mega-company it is today. This doesn’t happen by making friends. There are going to be hurt feelings, jealous people and those legitimately scorned by a company on its way up.
After reading the letter from the ABA, tell us what the side of the fence you are on.
It is unforunate that increased efficiency often means people loosing jobs and livelihood. I do feel sorry for them. But I’m pretty sure the concensus is that increased efficiency is an overall net win for the economy. Less resources spent in areas they are not needed means more resources are avaible elsewhere.
I like the way the letter suggests that bookstores should lecture their customers about how nasty Amazon is. Instead of, y’know, recognizing that they came to the store in the first place when they could have stayed at home and shopped Amazon instead.
Same arguments were made by currycomb makers, et al.
I understanding bemoaning the loss of local small businesses, but this has been going on since the Industrial Revolution, if not before. Cobblers, coopers, blacksmiths have all faded away as industrial manufacturing took hold. Instead of going to a cobbler for your shoes, you went to a shoe store, where a person with a retail job would sell you mass-manufactured shoes. The cobbler’s jobs went away, but the retail jobs, the manufacturing jobs and the distribution jobs took their place. Products got cheaper, the standard of living went up and the economy grew. It is by no means a perfect system, but it is the way of the world.
If booksellers are worried about Amazon, they’ve already missed the boat. Eventually books will be a niche market. It will take time, but it is inevitable. My son is going off to college next week. His textbooks will be e-books. He will do all his reading on his iPad and laptop.
It’s not enjoyable to think about the loss of the local bookstore, where the old man behind the counter would put books by your favorite authors aside for you when they came in, but Borders and Barnes and Noble killed off many of these already.