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Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

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Re: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

#201

Post by ahmedalsudani »

Frondo wrote: post #193
greenie_beans wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^^^ can't emphasize this enough. please don't buy from amazon if you have the means to afford the list price for a book. amazon isn't good for the ecosystem of books for a lot of reasons, but in this instance amazon makes publishers lose money. unfortunately publishers have no choice but to sell on amazon. you gotta vote with your dollars here to help sustain quality publishing.

Something else to be aware of is, with Powell's you're also supporting a union shop that pays its staff pretty well. No one's pissing in bottles in the back room at Powell's, unless it's for fun.

The union fought hard for that right.

Re: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

#202

Post by sukilot »

phobosanomaly wrote: post #184
maxioatic wrote: post #158

I love Powell's. I've spent way too many hours in both of their Portland locations (and the old Technical store, RIP) over the last 20+ years. I've lived within walking and biking distance to both the whole time. That said, these days I buy a majority of my books from Amazon, and have for a while. The simple reason is that for the books I buy most, which are technical in nature, the prices on Amazon are so much bette…

Here's my counterpoint. Your argument makes 100% sense in the short-term. In the long run, Amazon's strategically thin margins on technical books will disappear when the other vendors are driven out of business, and books across the board will see a price hike.

Amazon doesn't write books. If they raise margins, anyone (including the publisher) can pop up a storefront and promote it on Twitter to the community.

Re: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

#203

Post by loughnane »

d1str0 wrote: post #169
khazhoux wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the few "perfect mornings" in my life was a day off during a Portland business trip: with a Stumptown coffee, a Voodoo donut, and Powell's. Simply magical.

I live here and still had a similar perfect morning. Walking down a snow covered street, no cars, crisp and quiet, and then a warm Powell's book store serving their own coffee and cookies.

I can feel this. Only been to Powell’s once (I live in Boston) but that sounds wonderful

Re: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

#204

Post by beezle »

AlexandrB wrote: post #92

I'm going to take this opportunity to grind my personal axe: Amazon is extremely lazy about shipping books, throwing them into lightly-padded envelopes. Books shipped from Amazon usually arrive with at least minor cosmetic damage and sometimes much worse. For me this is reason enough to avoid buying books on Amazon.

THe past few years I have had books shipped more securely by 3rd party sellers than direct from Amazon.

Re: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

#205

Post by jkmcf »

maxioatic wrote: post #158

I love Powell's. I've spent way too many hours in both of their Portland locations (and the old Technical store, RIP) over the last 20+ years. I've lived within walking and biking distance to both the whole time. That said, these days I buy a majority of my books from Amazon, and have for a while. The simple reason is that for the books I buy most, which are technical in nature, the prices on Amazon are so much bette…

Ignoring Amazon, my beef is with everything sold at MSRP. Americans don’t have a history of haggling, and most stores’ employees probably aren’t equipped to give you 10% off. I have had luck getting a discount off a new Mac, though usually just enough to cover tax.

If I see an intriguing book in a store I will not hesitate to buy it if it’s 5-10% off. Otherwise I’ll get it on Amazon, probably on Kindle, probably just the sample since my physical backlog is already about 50.

Re: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

#206

Post by techfoolery »

asdff wrote: post #173
techfoolery wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to be that guy and say to effect, "well, welcome to the real world". There are trade-offs involved for every side, good and bad. Your book discovery process may be optimal for you, but I couldn't be further away from that. I don't really care to know Bob or Sally's taste at the local bookstore, don't know them, have 0 trust in them. (There's probably exceptions, insignificant ones though, in big cities l…

One benefit for me is that it's faster and easier to walk into my neighborhood bookstore and walk out with a good book that maybe I've already read a couple exerpts from right in the store (not some brief preview online), than doing my own legwork on book discovery and waiting for a shipment. I love my local bookstore, the people working there have great taste since they are literally professionals at this.

I see your point, but I'm more interested in folks who put theory into practice rather than folks who intimately know theory if that makes sense.

I think those can be two completely different tastes.

Re: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

#207

Post by throwawaysea »

While I recognize the convenience and price savings of shopping online at Amazon, the reality is that once charming bookstores disappear, people won’t even know what they’re missing to be able to ascribe a value to it. It’s about wanting a world that has a distributed power scheme (healthily decentralized), a marketplace of ideas (rather than only what Amazon platforms/sells), value placed on knowledge (books), spaces for subcultures to thrive, spaces for people in communities to interact with each other, etc.

Bookshops are just one example of what we are losing to megacorps for whom anti trust action is long overdue.

Re: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

#208

Post by mschuster91 »

kube-system wrote: post #133
mschuster91 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why a lot of countries have a "fixed book price" system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price

...so that the price would be $108 everywhere?

Whatever the printer decides. The idea is to prevent price cutting/dumping by large enterprises and keep local stores afloat while ensuring decent pay for authors, translators etc. - all in all it has served us well.

Re: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

#209

Post by m463 »

AlexandrB wrote: post #92

I'm going to take this opportunity to grind my personal axe: Amazon is extremely lazy about shipping books, throwing them into lightly-padded envelopes. Books shipped from Amazon usually arrive with at least minor cosmetic damage and sometimes much worse. For me this is reason enough to avoid buying books on Amazon.

Some have been over-packed - especially from third party bookstores. But new books from amazon, are hit or miss, sometimes being thrown in with non-book items. (think of packing the eggs with the hammers)

Re: Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore

#210

Post by mangodrunk »

mfer wrote: post #87

https://bookshop.org/ is now an option to use instead of Amazon. It also raises money for local bookstores.

I was skeptical at first, but now I am quite pleased with bookshop.org. It would be great if they had a subscription based thing similar to Prime so that I wouldn't have to pay so much for shipping each time (and if you don't go with UPS, then it tends to be very slow).
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