This week Amazon
announced an initiative that was probably designed to look like an
olive branch to independent brick and mortar booksellers but instead
came across as yet another way for the online giant to steal customers
from the nation’s bookstores. The Amazon Source
program gives indie bookstores the opportunity to sell Kindles in store
and get a percentage of sales generated by that store’s customers.
Sounds like an okay deal, right? Booksellers don’t think so.
Melville House, an independent publisher, posted a host of responses
to Amazon Source from bookstore owners and workers on their blog. No
big surprise, none of them think this program is a good deal for indies.
Some describe Amazon as “disingenuous” and “obviously a Trojan Horse
style attempt to gain access to our customers.” Others used harsher
language, comparing Amazon to a schoolyard bully or calling its business
practices a “multi-national ponzi scheme.”
Lest you think all these booksellers are just stuffy ebook haters
with a chip on their shoulders about Amazon, it’s important to note that
several of them already sell ebooks and sometimes ebook readers through
Kobo. One year ago Kobo signed a deal with the American Booksellers Association
that gives indie booksellers a chance to make money off of ebook sales
on the Kobo platform. In broadstrokes, it’s similar to the deal Amazon
is offering, though the money details differ. Bookstores that decide to
sell Kindles will only get a 6 percent discount when buying them for
resale. A source also stipulates that an indie store will get 10 percent
of every book bought by a customer who buys a Kindle from them, but
only for two years. Another major contributing factor: booksellers don’t
think that Kobo is the devil.
This latest scuffle is just part of the larger war between Amazon and
brick and mortar stores. Retailers have been railing against the
company’s Price Check app
for a couple of years now, charging that it encourages consumers to use
physical locations as showrooms and then buy online. Local businesses
have also been lobbying state governments to make Amazon collect sales
tax in order to remove what has been called an unfair advantage in
pricing. It’s not universal yet, but now more than half of Americans do have to pay local taxes when buying online.
With the loss of the tax-free discount in more and more states,
Amazon Source may be a bid to make up some of that revenue by squeezing
the last bit of change from the company’s oldest nemesis: physical
bookstores. It could be said that Amazon needs indie bookstores to join
the Source program more than bookstores need the money it might bring
in. As Stefan Moorehead of the Unabridged Bookstore in Illinois points
out, “our month over month sales have risen since Borders shut down in
2011.”
Given the vehement reaction, you probably won’t see Kindles being
sold in your local bookstore in the near future. Book lovers, is that a
good or a bad thing? Do you wish you could support the indie store you
love with ebook purchases but can’t bring yourself to buy through Kobo?
Would you be more willing if you could do it through Kindle?
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