Amazon and Hatchette

Dear Karen -

I feel raw and tender, like I will burst at one more piece of sad news. Upheaval. Wars. Bombs. Animals and people being tortured and hurt. Children killed. Mass murder. Rape. Suicide. Trees being cut down and rivers polluted and people thumping their bibles and their books and their chests. I scroll through Facebook quickly now, because I am looking hard for the beauty and mystery in this world, and sometimes I need to, just for my own soul, turn away from the news.

But of course, being a writer, I’ve not been able to turn away from news of the dispute between Amazon and Hatchette. It’s a mild dispute compared to so many others in the world that involve bloodshed and people losing their homes and children, but a dispute nonetheless, and one that writers are being asked to take sides on.

I can’t help but think though, as these two giants publicly duke it out, what’s this got to do with me?

Right now I am considering going to the bank to see if they have any repossessed trailers because I might want to buy one to reduce my living expenses and get out from under the thumb of a landlord. Right now I am taking on extra work, physical work that my body balks at because it’s sixty years old, but frankly, I need the money. Right now I am wondering if I can continue to afford the $300 a month rent I pay on my studio separate from my house. I am checking my bank to see how much I owe on the car. I am looking at my credit card bills wondering how I can pay them down. The dentist keeps sending reminders that I need to come in to see him. I can’t possibly come in to see him.

In short times are hard, and not just for me.

Buying a book – a new hardback book would cost $25. or more. Paperbacks are $15. Amazon and Hatchette, a book-seller and a book-buyer respectively, are as far from my life right now as Mars. I imagine this is true for most people.

Amazon wrote me a letter asking me to contact Hatchette and tell them to lower their e-book prices. A group of 900 writers took out an ad in the New York Times asking Amazon to stop holding books and authors hostage as leverage for their dispute with Hatchette. I read another piece this morning that claims that inexpensive books are good for readers, but not for anyone else in the industry, including writers. I wonder if that’s true. I wonder if writers have not been held hostage before. I wonder what corporation puts writers first, not just the best selling writers, but all of us, telling our stories and loving our characters because we have to.

Mostly I am very grateful for where I am. I’ve written books I’m proud of. I’ve reached readers. I get an occasional email or message from a reader telling me how much they loved one of my books, or telling me that A Broom of One’s Own, my book about housecleaning and writing, inspired them to not give up on their dreams. For income I teach writing and help people tell their stories. I like this work. In fact I love it.

So I do not come to this letter whining. I come filled with gratitude, but I also feel like I am watching the gods up in the sky battling for power and that my job is to write and dodge the falling concrete.

Yes, the results will effect me. Yes, this has to do with my creative life, the thing I hold most dear, the thing I know will always be there for me as long as I have my brain and my health, the thing that gets me through grief and strife and housing troubles.

A writer, out of principle, should purchase books by other writers in order to support them, but it’s a simple truth that I cannot afford books, and I believe there are other writers out there in the same boat. The literary community bemoans that we no longer have a reading public, but I would like to ask, what is $25. spent on a book to a minimum wage worker?

And I know minimum wage workers, some of them, read, because I was one. And I also know that college graduates, some of them, don’t read.

Life feels maximum crazy to me right now. I am depressed, and yet I am grateful. When asked why I write, I answer that it is the best antidepressant I know of. When asked what I think of the Amazon and Hatchette dispute, I don’t know what to say. When asked if I think books should be more affordable, I answer yes. I answer this not as a writer trying to earn a living, but as a reader yearning to buy books.

Love, Nancy