Janet Reid
I walked by the book rack at Duane Reade on 34th Street a couple days ago, clutching a vat of face spackle and a bag of cotton balls. I'm in Duane Reade almost every day buying one sort of something or another. Among the few things I haven't bought there are books. (Duane Reade is the NYC drugstore chain for those who live outside the area.)
I used to buy books at places like Duane Reade. In fact much of my early book buying was at the grocery store: that was the store I was in most often. I'd pore over the book rack and find an author I liked or a book that sounded good. I discovered Dick Francis at the grocery store, also Catherine Aird, Emma Lathen and Sue Grafton.
I chose books there the same way I chose them at the library: I'd look at the selection and pick several, then winnow them down to one or two; choices based most likely on cover price at the store or how many I could stuff in my bag at the library.
When I was buying books at the grocery store, or checking them out from the library I had to look at what was on the shelf to get an idea of what to select. Reviews didn't suggest choices or books to look for: mysteries didn't get review space in any paper or magazine I read. No one I knew read mysteries or if they did, we didn't talk about them.
But I've never bought a book at Duane Reade because how I select books has changed. It's changed from the years I actually set foot in grocery stores, to now, when I don't.
It's changed because twenty six blogs and three dozen websites cough up info about new or great or overlooked mysteries to my GoogleReader every single day. (If you don't know about GoogleReader go here. It's great.)
I don't need to look at the selection on the shelves to get an idea of what's available or to know what I want to buy. More often now I'm buying online from Amazon because when I see something that looks good (from that myriad of sources) it's a whole lot easier to click once at Amazon and presto, magic have it delivered.
This does not bode well for my friends and boon companions who are running retail book operations.
When Amazon first reared its head up in Seattle and started gnawing at the corners of the retail book market I was pretty sure it would get a belly ache and die of indigestion within a couple years.
Boy was I wrong.
I've never had much love for Amazon. Certainly not anywhere close to the warm feeling I have for my treasured bookstore friends: Twenty Third Avenue Books in Portland, Annie Blooms in Portland, Murder by the Book in Portland, and my general preference for pretty much any indie store in all the world instead of the faceless hulk that is T-Rex Amazonicus.
So, why do I buy from Amazon? Because when I know what I want, it's the easiest, fastest way to get it. I'd buy from the indies if it was fast and easy too but it's not.
Then today, I went over to the Dark Side and actually became part of Amazon. They snagged me the way all pushers do. They gave me something I needed, and they gave it to me for free.
If you look at my website, at the bottom of each page, you'll see what it is.
At the bottom of each page is a scrolling gallery of book covers.
We have a much more elegant version of this on our FinePrint website.
We also paid a website designer to create it and one of the godsends is tasked with updating it frequently.
I wasn't willing to spend much time or any money to have a gallery like that.
But, I needed book covers on my website. I'd been trying to figure out how to post them as individual pictures for a while. I had limited success largely because I'm witless about even the simplest template-based websites (such as mine), and because the book covers pictures I had all came in different sizes and some of them looked weird.
It was a half baked and unsatisfactory solution.
Today I was over at Bill Cameron's blog.
I noticed his scroll. I was poised to email "Bill, how did you do that" cause I know he's very very smart about these things. Then I noticed "get widget." And I clicked.
Amazon has made it as simple as click and paste for me to have something I want. I want book covers on my site. I'm ok with linking to a retailer cause I want people buying my client's books.
I'd prefer they linked to indie stores but they don't.
I'll take what I can get.
Indie book retailers have a big challenge facing them. Indie bookstores have long touted themselves as the thinking person's place to buy books; that hand selling, offering information and suggestions was their strength. When I look at my own book buying pattern and my own interactions with retailers, I think handselling is a smaller and smaller niche because there are so many other places to hear about great books (my website for example!). And now, even though I love indie bookstores, everyone who clicks on my website gets directed to Amazon.
Indie bookstores are right to not like this. I don't much like it either. But we all need to recognize that what I want ISN"T to send people to Amazon. What I want is the cool widget that shows my client's books on my website.
If I could get it another way I would.
Let me say that again: If I could get it another way, as easily and for free, I would.
And if I could buy books as easily from indies as I can from Amazon, I would. I want to support indies, I do. But no retailer gets rich for political reasons. Retailers thrive when they give customers what they want.
I'm not sure what the answer is. I just wish I was part of the solution instead of part of the problem.
