The Venn diagram of people who make book purchasing decisions based on “Independent Bookstore Day” and people who choose Amazon because a book is a couple dollars cheaper on a given day has to be two completely separate circles.
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.
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 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".