Amazon Just Happens to Hold Book Sale During Independent Bookstore Day
gizmodo.com
gizmodo.com
Which is to say, almost nobody cares.
If Walmart engaged in a price war with a small mom and pop bakery across the street I would be similarly unimpressed (disgusted, really).
A small bakery cannot engage in price manipulation for a meaningful time or volume to oust competition, that activity is completely different category.
Anyways the fundamental problem with most bookstores that aren't Barnes and Noble is that they all do a terrible job of having the things I want to read. When the local artisan bookstore won't bother to stock RA Salvatore or even fucking Tolkien because it's too "low brow" I don't have a whole lot of empathy for them. I actually do enjoy bookstores when they aren't merely a far more inconvenient way to order books from a large corporate distribution center.
There is no anti-trust law saying you can't have a sale the same day your competitors are having a party.
Generally, when anti-trust cases go to court, they will use individual cases like these of anti-conpetitive behavior as evidence to build a case of a pattern of that type of behavior.
World domination is often just about seeing a bit beyond the obviousness-horizon that otherwise limits us all.
Or the Occam's Razor explanation that they weren't thinking about it at all, because customers who shop based on Independent Bookstore Day are a very different, negligibly small customer base who weren't going to be spending their money at Amazon anyway.
From 2024: https://www.aboutamazon.com/news/books-and-authors/amazon-bo...
I just checked the two independent bookstores nearest me and neither one of them has any mention of it in their online presence. I've been a frequent customer of independent bookstores for years and never heard about this before. There's no Wikipedia page and Google Trends tells me there's not enough data to even give me a search history for this.
It makes a great headline and I'm sure the people who organize it are annoyed, but this might just be a case of ant meet boot. It's weirdly reassuring for organizers to think that Amazon specifically targeted them, but it seems more likely that they just... didn't even know it was happening.
IIRC it started at about the same time as 'Indie Record Store Day'; both are on Saturdays in April.
I shop at brick-and-mortars for whatever I can, and very much regret those gone missing because of the Great Monopolist. I really valued being able to examine many products before purchase.
Art of Electronics, Bookshop.org $128.70, Amazon $94.03 (list price $117)
SICP, Bookshop.org $90, Amazon $53.77 (list $75)
Both Amazon titles will be in my hands tomorrow for no additional shipping cost to me. Bookshop suggests that for SICP if I pay $8 extra, I can have it expedited (3-6 days) or for $9 extra can cut that to 3-5 days with priority, though there is a free shipping option available (with no timeframe indicated).
SICP comes up on Amazon when searching for “SICP”; it does not on Bookshop.org, so I need to search by the longer title.
In case “nerd books” is a particularly weak spot, I tried the first book on NYT Best Seller list, Perfect Divorce. Bookshop $28; Amazon $21 and they can have in my hand between 10 and 3 today.
As a consumer, I see at least two hard downsides (cost and speed) and one soft downside (selection/browsing ease).
Https://thriftbooks.com
Admittedly, they’re not Amazon fast. But using their Wish List scores me plenty of great deals on things I don’t need ASAP.
Pro tip: For used stick to Like New and Very Good. I’ve had bad luck with Good, and have never tried below that.
Amazon Thriftbooks Bookshop.org Title
$94.03 $94.52 $128.70 Art of Electronics
$53.77 $89.49 $ 90.00 Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
$20.98 $22.97 $ 27.89 Perfect Divorce> Amazons worst contribution to the world was leaving people with the expectation that they need to have 2 day shipping for every single item they purchase. The climate impact alone is insane.
Here you're very clearly not discussing "individual human behavior that gives companies the impetus and the air cover to destroy the planet", you're directly blaming Amazon for creating high expectations for delivery times.
Your argumentation here feels like a motte and bailey to me. You attack Amazon for offering 2-day shipping because that's bad for the environment, I point out that the alternative that I would have used in the pre-Amazon world likely wasn't any better, you retreat into a more general attack on large-scale societal problems stemming from individual human behaviors.
I engaged with your bailey and found it lacking. I don't disagree with your motte, but that's not the conversation we were having.
One question I've been asking myself lately: are single to maybe double digit price optimizations on books such a dominant concern that I should prioritize them over other values?
For an activity I have to do daily, maybe. That order of savings on meals adds up fast enough to be a triple digit number in a month.
Book purchases are weekly to monthly events, any savings on the order that amazon can give me tends toward a rounding error in a monthly budget. Or if my budget shrinks to the point they're not and I need to conserve funds that badly, I will use a library system.
Speed is nice but it's rarely crucial (and these days publishers themselves can get it in your hands pretty quickly).
Lots of us software engineers know "premature optimization is the root of all evil" -- when you overoptimize early, you commit resources in particular attention towards optimizations you may not know serve your ultimate goals.
Maybe your goals begin and end with getting the book in your hand at the lowest price in the shortest time period.
Maybe your goals include what kinds of businesses, activity, people and therefore society you support economically.
My local library had their seasonal used book sale last Thurs - Sat, but I sense that was simply coincidence.
I would match both, and i think most people on HN do too, but how many of you go out of their way (town) to avoid amazon or any large online-only distributor, like me?
I keep a big "todo" list on my phone for movies, series, and books: every time I come across something which looks interesting, it gets added to the list. But I don't actively take the time to actually purchase anything from it, so it tends to be forgotten.
If I were to hear about "Independent Bookstore Day" on a Saturday morning, there's a pretty good chance that would remind me that I have a lot of books to buy, and drop by my local bookstore to buy some. If I happened to be shopping on Amazon and saw a big book sale, I would probably be reminded that I have a lot of books to buy, and see if they were discounted.
But if I just purchased a bunch of books from Amazon, I would no longer be going to buy those same books during Independent Bookstore Day, and I would be unlikely to splurge on another pile of books from my local bookstore. In other words, my local bookstore is missing out on sales because of Amazon undercutting them.
The trigger isn't "support your local bookstore", the trigger is "books are a thing you can buy".
Of all the questionable things amazon does, having a sale hardly seems like one of them. I dont think amazon is under any moral obligation to respect their competitors marketing moments. Just like how if an independent book seller wanted to have a sale during "prime day", that would be a-okay.
That first sentence is a not a throw-away. I hope local, independent bookstores can continue to exist. And also that brick and mortar book stores continue to exist. But it's not like Amazon is illegally colluding to keep them down. independent bookstores just arent a very profitable businesses.
I don't disagree that bookstores are probably not that profitable, but I do think that Amazon is taking all the oxygen out of the room and not necessarily by being better, but have having a dragon hoard of cash that probably wasn't generated by selling books.
Because it's a business providing a consumer good - not a public institution.
> Having local independent bookstores enhances the quality of living for an entire community
How do they do that? They don't help me because they don't carry books I'm interested in at prices I'm willing to pay. It's serving so few people in the community it can't pay for rent.
Public access to books is subsidized already through libraries.
Which is to say that the marketplace as a whole exists for the benefit of the public. The entire point of regulation is to remediate issues that competition alone fails to address.
We don’t need to prop up an inferior (worse selection, higher price) book industry.
> Which is to say that the marketplace as a whole exists for the benefit of the public.
That’s a more generous characterization than I would use. Once again, if I’m forced to use worse goods at higher prices thats not a benefit to me.
> if I’m forced to use worse goods at higher prices thats not a benefit to me.
Not all benefits are first order effects. Presumably you appreciate your local environment not being full of heavy metals despite the fact that remediating toxic waste increases production costs.
I agree with that. And there are certainly negative second order effects of Amazon.
> Presumably you appreciate your local environment not being full of heavy metals
I’m just not agreeing that big business = evil and environment destroying and local business = good and sustainable
I’ve had good and bad experiences with both and have no evidence that local business is immune from bad incentives.
This isn’t “smaller towns beating big corporations with the local government”. It’s “business owners in a small town stop competition using local government lobbying”.
In both cases you'll be able to find people who complain bitterly about the status quo. The fairness of the local politics will vary but at the end of the day if the majority of the population were truly unhappy with the situation presumably the officials would be voted out.
And I can still get those experiences when I go to a towns that have a unique book store.
I don’t why this was such a key institution that needs to be subsidized. We may have fond memories. If you’re just generally lamenting that good times have changed - I’m with you. But we can’t just mandate that the world stops changing.
The main streets that people like have coffee shops, boutiques, specialists, restaurants, etc.
Its a business. How could you expect it to exist without being profitable?
Maybe they could transition to charities.
Furthermore, I'm NOT evaluating them only on money terms. I was very clear that they provide value and I want them to continue to exist.
And independent bookstore could use the profit they make to say remodel their store. And inside certain rules that would be legitimate expense. And they would not pay tax on it.
For example, Amazon UK paid zero Corporation Tax in the UK in 2023[0] despite recording £222m in profit. Meanwhile, a smaller UK bookstore has to pay 25% CT on its profits - and it can't afford the army of lawyers and accountants it would take to avoid this. And since Amazon is paying less tax, it can sell its books more cheaply, undercutting the smaller competitors.
Some might call this unfair. And I'm inclined to agree.
But to be honest, I still buy books off Amazon even though it makes me feel slightly icky. What's a boy to do?
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/jun/01/amazon-uk...
>For example, Amazon UK paid zero Corporation Tax in the UK in 2023[0] despite recording £222m in profit.
But if you read the article you linked, you'd see it's a pretty straightforward investment deduction, rather than some dastardly tax evasion scheme? Amazon might be still doing the "double Irish Dutch sandwich" or whatever, but the article makes it clear that most of it is coming from investment tax credits.
>Amazon’s main UK division has paid no corporation tax for the second year in a row after benefiting from tax credits on a chunk of its £1.6bn of investment in infrastructure, including robotic equipment at its warehouses.
>The government’s “super-deduction” scheme for businesses that invest in infrastructure was introduced by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor. It allowed companies to offset 130% of investment spending on plant and machinery against profits for two years from April 2021. Amazon booked a credit of £1.13m in 2021 under the scheme.
If you have a problem with the law, call your senator, instead of ranting on a forum.
(I have nothing to do with Amazon other than being a shopper there and own some stocks via VOO.)
I got a Costco membership last month. That with Instacart has been working h out very well.
I’ll use Amazon here and there but I’m making a big switch and canceling.
This was decided before this move, but it makes me feel much better in doing so.
Electronics - B&H
Computers - Microcenter
Musical Gear - Sweetwater (even though they got bought out by private equity, my sales agent always tries his best to do right by me)
The reason for this is that both paper and printing here is cheap along with labor. The original author also licenses for cheap. The publishing houses however take a large cut increasing the cost of the book.
People get a hold of the epub and print them and sell them for 1/4th of the price sometimes 1/10th for new and even less for used.
The only way I see around this is digital libraries. Let people rent unlimited books (but like Netflix limited at a time) and take a monthly cut.
Of course piracy is cheaper lmao
Of course! The number of books outside educational material sold in this country with huge population is insignificant. And it is not much surprise since most people can't really afford much.
But at least mobile data is really cheap and Whatsapp is free, so people get all the information they care about just from this combo.
It's not like they're having a Pope Francis Funerary Sale, there's nothing offensive or distasteful about this.
For me, locally - those never have anything else than top books on selling lists, selling them for the stock price. I am not a rich person and I can't justify paying ~ 30-40% more just to support them.
A) Books?
B) Bricks and mortar book retailers?
C) Customers/readers?
Make suburbs great again!
So then they are having urgent meetings on "how did we possibly mess up this one, and look like jerks"?
Or is someone getting their bonus or promotion for being aggressive?
It's not mysterious. It hurts small stores that aren't aligned with Amazon and helps Amazon and small stores aligned with Amazon. Looks like typical Amazon bullying which has already been accepted since nobody is challenging the passthru book marketplace. Amazon used to sell books though, so that matters?
After all, last year they didn't overlap?
One thing they would have concluded pretty quickly, though, is that there's no way for a large corporation to win a public argument with random small bookshops. If it was in fact inadvertent, writing a fact sheet with detailed refutations of every argument that they acted in bad faith would just make them look obnoxious. So Amazon says what they think is best to say, independent bookstores say they don't buy it, and that kinda has to be the end of it.
When the kind of people who run "indie bookstores" come and set up in areas like mine instead of staying in their twee suburbs and posh little towns, then I'll start using them and stop using Amazon. Until then, Amazon are the people democratising access to book shopping, delivering fair-priced books to people regardless of where they live, not to mention the convenience of Kindle.
I mean, there are tons of reasons to dislike Amazon, without looking for something this thin.
The entire article sounds like an excuse for cheap shots against Jeff Bezos and Amazon.
I will never buy books from a bookseller or bookshop that thinks it is acceptable to behave like this : "Leah Koch, owner of the Ripped Bodice, in Los Angeles, California, kept it simple: “Fuck Jeff Bezos,” she told Variety."
And here in Australia brick and mortar bookshops tend to carry popular rubbish that I would be ashamed to read.
If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here, we'd appreciate it.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
It really shows how little you understand who is here, if you needed some my blood I would gladly give it to you, if your wage was given by democratic vote I would vote for an increase.
And even Powell's doesn't have everything (say Tyler Cowen's reading list). I know because I've asked at that little desk on the 1st floor that gives out slips, and they couldn't help me out.
(It’s great, regardless, having been there myself.)
The worst library is still better than the best corporate bookstore.
We are talking about book stores, meaning there is a desire to own the book being read. You don't get to own the books in a library. As someone who heavily annotates my books—except fiction—I will need to own a physical copy (or a digital edition). I haven't been to a book store in a while, but I recall the last two times being quite disappointing. Meanwhile, on Amazon, or other online providers, I can find what I need more often than not.
FYI, Home Depot will sell you a box truck for about $44k; which I think is a pretty good deal.
I've bought a lot of books from the thrift store that had library stamps in them.
Still, for availability, the real winner is the not-necessarily-legal archives where you can find, say, OOP foreign books that I'd have to cross an ocean to find in a library.
"They certainly have Asimov and European classics."
I live in a top 5 city in Poland. My local library *has only school readings and harlequins". Interlibrary loan or anything else? Nope, they don't offer that.
Some recommendations: Seattle has Ada technical books. Portland has Powells. Strand in NYC has some technical books. and in Boston MIT Press Bookshop is gold. There are others.
That can't be provided by every local book store.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=rWRbTnE1PEM&pp=ygUWQmV6b3MgZWF...
When I bought my copy of Peter Karow's _Digital Typefaces_ the proprietor asked if I was in a hurry to receive it, and if not, if it would be okay if he reviewed it first to see if it was something he would want to purchase.
The trouble these days isn't finding paperback sci-fi in used bookstores, but finding used bookstores at all in the first place. They stills exist but not in the numbers they used to. If you just look up bookstores on Google maps, many of the results are coffee shops that have a single bookshelf just for the aesthetics of nominally being a bookstore. You know a real bookstore because the shelves are cheap and mismatched, with as many crammed into the space as they can manage. That's what happens if they're trying to make ends meet by buying and selling books, rather than printing money selling coffee and ambience to laptop workers.
I recently went to a relatively new Barnes & Noble in a growing flyover state city, and was very surprised at the way this location felt like Borders or B&N 20+ years ago.
No substantial sign of the bookstore -> big giftshop with books trend I felt like I'd seen everywhere over the last decade. Very substantial selection of books, pretty sure I saw an Asimov title and some Manning.
This was in an area with a lot of growth (and tech expansion specifically), but chances are slim you've even heard of the city unless you've lived in this state (one not even in the top half of populous states in the US).
It's especially interesting considering that B&N owns their stores (no franchisee/indie optimism in play here).
Not sure if it's a trend, but it was a good experience!
It has just as much space devoted to books as it did when it first opened over 30 years ago. Lego took over a few aisles, but the original Software Etc. section is now all books - a net zero change.
Other than that, it hasn't changed one bit. Frozen in the early 1990s. Original wallpaper and everything. It even smells the same.
When our friends and family visit, they all demand to visit this holy site - and they always leave with bags full of books.