Is There a Right or Wrong?

 Jenny Milchman, all around great gal, has posted yet another insightful piece on the controversy surrounding the success of or potential world domination by Amazon.com [Amazon: E-volutionary or Reinventing the Wheel?]. Her post stemmed from yet another article in the NYT on the subject [Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal]. The response below is what I replied on her blog, but thought it deserved repeating.

I love what Amazon has done for the industry on both sides. I've shopped at Amazon for years and have loved its convenience. As for the publishing side, they have opened up new doors for so many writers and readers. They have offered a brighter shade of legitimacy to those not published by the legacies. The only problem is, booksellers don't seem to get that it is not all or nothing. I know many booksellers think Amazon is the cause of them losing business, but I have said this before and I will say it again: lack of customer service is what drives business away, along with higher prices.

It is not Amazon's fault it has more money to buy books at a lower per unit price. It is their good fortune to have that capital. What I have noticed over the last decade is that so many (not all by any means) indie booksellers have gotten angry at the industry that is shifting and growing around them, and have almost given up. They don't offer the old-fashion kind of CS that takes them away from their desks/counters to lead a person to the book they are looking for. They don't have time to be pleasant when someone comes in at the last minute before the store closes. And in so many cases (from my personal experiences) they are unwilling to carry, or even special order books from authors and publishers they "don't like or support." I cannot even count how many indie stores have refused to carry Echelon books or host our authors, or even special order because they don't "consider" us a real publisher. {{insert colorful expletives here}}.

[image error]Things change and Amazon does so well because people simply don't expect those things from a web site. Log on, get your stuff, log off, wait for delivery. No grumpy salespeople, no waiting in lines, nobody ramming their overloaded basket into the small of your back…over and over…and no traffic. They are very small prices to pay for not getting them in hand immediately. Most of us are okay with that if it saves us money.

Don't dis Amazon because they are successful. You still have a choice. Don't like what they do or how they do it, don't shop with them. It's pretty simple. But don't make them out to be bad guys because they are good at what they do.

KS