211–220 of 303 posts
How about "finding the site that best supports independent booksellers"? Its disappointing that so much of our society is about cheapest price.
Bookshop.org is about that, privately funded with the objective to let independent book sellers stand up to the power of amazon. https://bookshop.org/info/about-us
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That's one way to think about it. But that may not be enough to sustain the places that provide curation, events, browsing, etc, etc. I've mostly stopped buying books from Amazon. I generally buy them from my local bookstore via their website. Because it turns out I like having a local bookstore, and I think Amazon has quite enough money and power already.
Ive been a huge fan of betterworldbooks since discovering it for university textbooks over a decade ago. They have a pretty massive selection and the money goes to some respectable causes.
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I think you might be confusing peoples desires of a physical book, vs bookstore?
I want a book, I can choose to buy from a local shop or Amazon or print on demand shop selling a pirated copy. Those options are listed most expensive to cheapest. But a portion of the the sale goes to that business, who in turn passes it on to various places. The local bookshop uses the money to keep an asset in my local community and employs people in my local community. Amazon ships from a warehouse, and provides…
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I guess you wouldn't be buying it if you pirate it.
This is aimed towards physical books. Hopefully if people can access books legally and cheaply it will discourage piracy.
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As a German I don't have to worry too much about the prices of books. We have Buchpreisbindung https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buchpreisbindung
Exactly, the cheapest and fastest way to get a book in Germany is most likely your neighborhood book store on the way back from work. (And if they don't have the book in store, they can order it for the next day.)
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Great idea. I'll implement that for sure. Another thing I'm working on is a "No Amazon" filter that just skips Amazon and any Amazon subsidiaries from the results
The no-Amazon thing is maybe a little complicated. Many 'independent' book dealers have deals with Amazon, for example to use Amazon's shipping, inventory, or print on demand infrastructure, to sell through Amazon either exclusively or non-exclusively, or to be a channel through which Amazon routes divests books returned to Amazon. Those deals with Amazon make Amazon money and make Amazon more powerful, because Amazo…
Random used books have very little value. My town library just had its annual book sale which comes from some combination of donations over the course of the year and culling its collection. Depending on the day of the sale it was $10-$20 for a paper grocery bag of books. And, yes, there are probably book dealers looking for the odd item that's worth more than that. That's actually a useful market mechanism.
We tend to think of books as something unique but, in general, the cost of connecting your old stuff to someone who might actually want it is often higher than the value of the item. I have a bunch of things that someone would probably pay some amount of money for but the time and effort to list on eBay might net me minimum wage.
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Poor people should be able to buy books without having to subsidise your bookshop aesthetic.
Exactly. Enabling poor people to buy books is a far greater social good than having somewhere comfortable for hipsters to sit with their laptops and middle class mums to push their three wheeled buggies round.
Also not sure why you blast that sexism around.
All the cheap booksellers post their catalog on all the syndication sites.