Amazon: It Is A Jungle Out There

A friend who is a bookseller/bookstore owner posted a copy of this article on FB of how Amazon is practicing a form of legal espionage by proxy in having consumers use a smart-phone app to scan prices at retail stores, then the consumer goes to Amazon and buys the product, be it a book or another good, at a lesser price. If the consumer has Amazon Prime, then there is free shipping. Often, there is no sales tax on the purchase. If I understand Bezos correctly, Amazon is not against sales tax per se but wants the federal government to establish some protocols and processes which makes sense because it is essentially is interstate commerce.

Amazon is mining such data for its price points. Because the profit margins for Amazon are so low, Amazon makes up the difference by selling a lot of stuff.

He, like many retailers, especially bookstore owners, are rightfully concerned about Amazon's leverage and sway over the book-selling business. Simply, there is no way that a hard copy bookseller can beat Amazon on price unless it is used books and even that is questionable. Of particular worry is the ebook where the costs of "production" (if that is the right word) are virtually nil after the formatting is complete. For example, I downloaded all of the Commentaries that John Calvin wrote in his lifetime--which would weigh perhaps a 100 lbs in traditional hardcover and cost over $ 100--for $ 2.99 yesterday on my Kindle Fire.

Books hold a special place in my heart and in rethinking my post a couple of days ago about the eclipsing of newspapers and hard copy books by digital media, I basically inaccurately ascertained that my affection for hard copies of books was mere sentimentality. It is more than this. Bookstores for me are meccas of knowledge, a playground of the mind in the world of ideas. Where virtual online worlds can disappear with the loss of power, the bookstore is a real object. Maybe analogous to online images of women where fantasy is all that is proffered versus a real flesh and blood woman. I also subscribe to supporting local businesses rather than stockholders who have capital to join entities like Amazon where the game then becomes so lopsided that it essentially becomes a beating in commerce.

Yet, I have also been in discussion with traditional publishers in seeing if there was interest in the book I am writing and I basically have received, like a lot of first time authors, some pretty discouraging feedback as to the prospects of going the traditional publishing route. As if my Ph. D. in Educational Psychology and 25 years of working with young people on college transition issues, and being quoted by USA Today and Wall Street Journal online about such issues, offer scant evidence of the likelihood of me being able to compose a culturally-valuable work. I am just one more schmuck in the vanity press market. The condescension has been disturbing and it has basically made me decide to go with Kindle as the exclusive publisher of my content. All I can say is that I explored the monopoly of the traditional publishing house and traditional booksellers and they have been found wanting.

So, it essentially becomes which monopoly do I want to tangle with...well, the answer is pretty obvious. The one that gives me the most opportunity and allows me to retain the rights to my work and yes the profits . I say that sadly but I don't have the time to send out hundreds of queries to literary agents and publishers just to get a pile of rejection letters. I trust that if I do good work that an audience will find me. The need is there. It hopefully will start small and Kindle into a Fire.