Pledge to Buy Books Locally

As you may have noticed, Amazon.com and the big bookstore chains (Barnes & Noble, Borders, Wal-Mart) sell books cheaply. They do not do this to help you out. They sell books cheaply to make a profit for themselves and for their shareholders. Amazon doesn't care about your career or your work.

Most people don't actually know the life-cycle of a scholarly book. Here's a guided tour:

The writer: First, a graduate student writes and defends a dissertation on, say, the history of butter. The graduate student--if lucky--wins a tenure-track professorship on the basis of this research. As an assistant professor, our hero knows she must publish to earn tenure. She probably revises her dissertation into a book meant for an academic audience--a monograph. She now must secure a contract with an academically-credible publisher, usually a university press,  in order to keep her job.

The press: The scholarly press is most likely subsidized by the university to which it is attached, and/or is a  registered non-profit organization. The mission of the scholarly press is to disseminate scholarship. Most university presses are not and have never in history been profitable. There are a few exceptions, for-profit scholarly presses such as Routledge and Norton (an employee-owned company). Some scholarly imprints, such as Basic Books, are subsidies of larger presses. Basic, for example, is owned by Perseus Books. Even these for-profit scholarly imprints are unlikely to be profitable, and are in effect subsidized by the front-list bestsellers published by more mainstream imprints or by the textbook division (a topic for another letter).

The book: How many people really want to buy (let alone read) The History of Butter: Agri/culture, Hegemony, and Conquest? In the mid-nineties, when I worked in scholarly publishing, the average print run for a book like this might be 1000-1500 copies. Most of these book sales would be to university libraries. The press would also use direct mail lists of scholars in the field to publicize this book, and some sales would certainly come from independent bookstores. Occasionally, you'd get a breakaway hit and go back for another printing. Or you'd know that the book would appeal to an incrementally larger audience (say, a history of hip hop or a collection of interviews with contemporary filmmakers, or an accessible history of a country which we had recently invaded) and you'd arrange for a incrementally larger print run.

The bookstores: Scholarly, independent, and/or political bookstores might actually order one copy of the monograph on the history of butter. Why? Because they like the sales rep's pitch, because they know their customers are interested in butter, because they want to maintain a reputation of providing cutting-edge books. If the books don't sell, the booksellers return their undamaged inventory to the press in a few months for full credit. The press expects this and has included returns in its profit-and-loss calculations.

Outcome: The assistant professor gets tenure, the press carries out its mission, the library serves its community, the independent bookstore offers something special to its customers, the field of butter history is furthered.

Enter the Chains: Giant national corporations order in bulk, so they can and do demand special bulk discounts. This is called "economies of scale," one of the tenets of free market capitalism. Because they've extorted a discount from the publishers, big chains are able to undercut the prices of independent bookstores who order one or two books at time, instead of 250 or 500. Independent bookstores must charge the publisher's suggested retail price in order to make any money, and they now seem greedy and uncaring, and begin to hemorrhage customers. If the chain orders one or two books for each of its hundreds of stores, the publisher must increase its print run to accommodate that order. When the books don't sell, the chain returns the books for full credit, and the press must try to sell the books as remainders or pulp the books. The press begins to hemorrhage money. The press strategizes and decides to focus its efforts on scholarly books with trade appeal. No more monographs, no more revised dissertations by untenured professors. They now need to publish books by people with famous names, or books on topics of general interest (Sex! Brief Introductions to Whatever! Rock-n-Roll!).

The Reader: And what about the reader? The reader--that's all of us, of course--wants many things from a book (pleasure, information, escape, etc). Sometimes we need a book. We readers have limited resources, because we live in a world in which multinational corporations have driven down our wages and withheld their taxes from towns and states. We want to live in communities with vibrant social, political, and cultural life, but we're worried about coming up with our own rent. Big chains--and most internet commerce--exploit our desire for cheap books just as they exploit our desire for cheap food or clothes. But big chains do not help us. Big chains suck money from our towns and give nothing back. Big chains hurt publishers, hurt bookstore workers, hurt writers, hurt scholars, hurt students, hurt readers.

So you see, my friends, that's your career and mine I'm talking about. That's your tenure you just sold for 25% off the cover price plus free shipping. That's the life of your community you just traded for one-click ordering.

How do we stop this juggernaut? We buy local, of course. We shop for new books at independent bookstores like [YOUR FAVORITE LOCAL INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORES]. We order our textbooks for our classes only from locally-owned independent bookstores, especially ones who share our values. We suck it up and special-order the things they don't stock and we wait a week for the book to come in. We buy our all our gifts from these independent bookstores, or we give gift certificates. We pay the publishers' retail price and consider it an investment in our own careers and the lives of our communities.

I'm asking you to please stop buying from Amazon and the big chains. I'm asking you right now because bookstores across the country are in crisis, and because together we can sustain these invaluable resources, keep good jobs in town, and help our own careers in the process. Let's take it slow, so the change sticks.

Let's make a pledge to buy all our new books and order all our textbooks from independent local bookshops like [YOUR LOCAL BOOKSTORE] for a semester. Or even a year. What do you say? Are you in? 

 [Signed]

PS More info here on Food For Thought here: http://www.foodforthoughtbooks.com/support-and-sustain

More on Amazon's predatory policies: http://www.bostonreview.net/BR35.6/roychoudhuri.php