Amazon is Your Friend
Yes, I said it. Anyone who knows me knows how far I’ll go to impress upon people the ethical requirement to patronize one’s local independent bookseller (”or they won’t be around any longer,” is my usual tagline here). And I still believe that, with all my heart. And I love love love my local booksellers and can’t imagine life without them.
But as I get older I’m less binary in my thinking, and I don’t believe that the Amazon/local bookseller necessarily has to be an either/or proposition.
Look at it this way. The goal for any published author is to sell thousands and thousands of copies of her books in a very short time, and she needs to be willing to do whatever is necessary to work with her publisher to make that happen.
And there’s no denying that Amazon is an excellent tool. The company actually does the industry a lot of good.
I love independent booksellers, but for economic reasons they are not always able to do what Amazon can and does (giving publishers workable terms and not ship returns, for example); and the reality is that for authors as well as for publishers and independent booksellers, selling books is a business.
The other thing I’m noticing about Amazon is that it is a tremendous marketing tool. Many people search Amazon for books and then buy them from their local independent bookseller. You can’t call a local bookseller or and ask the sales people to read you the blurb, the first chapter, or the reviews; and if you don’t happen to live close to said bookseller, this can be a problem — but you can get that information from Amazon.
Yes, Amazon is an impersonal megalithic corporation, and I don’t believe for a second that corporations are our friends. But that doesn’t mean that we cannot use them to our advantage, because they’re not going away anytime soon. Buy your books whenever possible at your local independent bookseller — I stand by my signature phrase — but don’t dismiss Amazon as a great venue for selling your books, as well.
And less binary thinking would be healthy for everyone … beyond the elements of style!
Posted in Publicity, Books, Tools, Doing the Right Thing on February 27th, 2008