Goodbye Goodreads – How Amazon will ruin a Good thing.

Perky snapshot of the happy couple gripping their departing souls.

I saw the news first in a series of notifications that Facebook sent me on my phone alerting me that people were commenting on a post I had made on the Left Bank Books page.  I hadn’t actually made a post today, so imagine my surprise that we were getting so much attention!

After struggling to find the actual post on my phone for a few panicked minutes I resorted to firing up ye olde laptop, and there it was, the offending status.

Apparently while I was away from the switch today, one of my alert co-workers posted the news that only comes as a shock to those who think Amazon or Goodreads gives one flying.. well, you know.. about stupid little things like diversity, independence and healthy competition in the book industry.  Goodreads sold out to Amazon.

Yawn.

After a couple of seconds of scrolling through my friends’ statuses, I found the link to Goodreads announcement promising “exciting news” complete with a perky picture of Otis and Elizabeth, founders of Goodreads, clutching Kindles with Goodreads stickers on them.

I scanned the message and found the usual blather about being able to “touch millions of people” and blah blah blah.  Then in the second paragraph I just had to stop for a second.  ”We truly could not think of a more perfect partner for Goodreads as we both share a love of books and an appreciation for the authors who write them.”

Here’s my message for Goodreads -

Really, Goodreads?  You’ve forsaken all the other opportunities to partner with independent bookstores, Kobo, even Barnes & Noble & the Nook?  How about iPad?  Also, who at Amazon has a love of books or authors?

And who, for the love of all that is good in the world, will FINALLY notice and successfully challenge Amazon’s blatant attempts – and dare I say it, success – at monopolizing an entire industry?

I’ve had my issues with Goodreads before, and truthfully I’ve been way too preoccupied with running my own bookstore to spend much time reviewing books for free for a company who will then use those reviews to sell books somewhere else.  Back when I started my Goodreads account, I noticed that you couldn’t remove the Amazon link from the places to buy the books, but I did settle with including Indiebound and my bookstore among them.  Heck, I even started a Goodreads account for the store and encouraged – yes, that’s right Otis and Elizabeth, encouraged - the booksellers who work with me to review books there so that we could feature those reviews in their staff pick pages on our website to, you know, sell books.  We actually talked about it at staff meetings there for a while, looking for ways to better incorporate Goodreads into our ways of recommending books because you had a pretty cool idea.

I’ve now deleted all the accounts to which I have administrative access.

And, ok sure. Kindle is the Kleenex of e-readers.  And, alright yes, you’ll reach a crap-load of readers, but here’s the bigger picture – and yes there is a bigger picture than Amazon:

You just turned your back on another, more interesting crap-load of readers who use Kobo and Nook and have zero interest in Amazon’s app, Kindle or other godforsaken tool.  And this particular crap-load of readers actually spend more money per e-book, and have stronger loyalty to libraries, independent stores and other bricks and mortar stores – an attitude which, incidentally, nurtures books and reading in a way that selling your reader information to the biggest of all Big Brothers just doesn’t do.  I’ll spare you the speech about supporting local economies, because I do realize it’s too much to ask to call the world around you to your attention on this, your “emotional day” when you feel like a “college graduate.”  I’m so very happy for you that you’ve graduated from the low rent, unwashed masses of independent readers, sellers, writers and publishers who actually built, with the suggestions, recommendations and conversations, the empire you just sold.

p.s. – It doesn’t soften the blow when you mention job offerings.  It just sounds the bell that means you’re going to hire people to accumulate more of our, scratch that, their data to sell.

Anyway, to riff off the Goodreads message:

I’m not excited about this for three reasons:

1. With the reach and resources of Amazon, Goodreads can introduce more readers to our vibrant community of book lovers and create an even better experience for our members and create a more generic and cold experience for your members.

2. Our members have been asking us to bring the Goodreads experience to an e-reader for a long time. Now we’re looking forward to bringing Goodreads to the most popular e-reader in the world, Kindle, and further reinventing what reading can be blowing the opportunity to bring the Goodreads experience to ALL e-readers and tablets in the world.

3. Amazon supports us continuing to grow our vision as an independent entity (so they won’t have to underwrite your operating expenses), under the Goodreads brand (so they can get around monopoly regulations) and with our unique culture (which will gradually be colonized and then assimilated to the Amazon culture, whereupon your brand will disappear and Amazon will take what you’ve given them and watch you fail with glee.)

I’ve reached the end of my interest in this particular subject for the evening.  I’ll drink a toast to your “graduation” when I open my Schlafly Pale Ale.

Operation Book Deployment: The Penguin Random House Juggernaut

Tonight I’m watching Sandy stomp her way inland from the East Coast, infiltrating tunnels, flooding subways, soaking parks and attracting Anderson Cooper and his doppelgangers to the flooded streets like dogs to the cat litter box.

It’s hard not to draw the parallel to the other news taking shape relatively quietly under the noise of the election and stormageddon that Penguin and Random House, two of the biggest, most bloated publishers in the world will merge creating a publishing Superstorm of their very own.

The New York Times article about this is a must read. Especially this little gem where they report Penguin Random House will “invest in books and in new ways of deploying them.” (apparently we deploy books like unmanned drones now) “This could include digital platforms for selling books directly to consumers… as well as new digital formats.” [italics and sarcasm mine] Awesome. Now bookstores can compete against publishers AND Amazon. Is there anyone in the world who doesn’t want to destroy bookselling? Anyone?

Let’s just dial it back a tick and take a good look at what’s going on here, shall we?

The United States Department of (in)Justice looked up from their Kindles briefly to side with Amazon on the Agency Model lawsuit – a decision that was as patently ridiculous as the Seahawks/Packers Replacement Ref call – and the heads of virtually every major publisher in the world looked at each other, held up their stock trade orders high above their heads and said in unison “SELL.”

Why?  Because the Agency Model allowed the publishers and bookstores to combat the rape of the the bookselling industry by Amazon.  Now that the assault is legitimized by the government, publishing is trying to find a way to shut that whole thing down.

What do you do when your company has no control over its profit margin and is being willfully undercut by it’s main customer?  If you own an independent bookstore, you call that a normal day.  If you’re a corporate giant like Penguin, you merge with another more powerful giant so that you have bargaining power.

But what does this mean for the other 99%?  The authors, the booksellers, the readers?  It means less competition.  For everything.  And that, my friend, is bad news for everyone.

1. If more of the big boys merge (MPS, Hachette, HarperCollins, etc.) authors will have even fewer places to shop their books, meaning they’ll get paid less.  Meaning they won’t be able to even make the modest living they do now.
2. Which leads us to consequence number two – readers won’t enjoy as many new releases.  Not only will authors get squeezed out of the game, the types of books that get published will represent a narrower and narrower range.  If there are only 2 or 3 big publishers, who is going to take a chance on the next Kurt Vonnegut?  Who is going to stick with the next Gillian Flynn through a couple smaller releases before the big “Gone Girl” break?  More importantly, who will represent the infinitely important books to marginalized people (think Stone Butch Blues to an entire generation of working class Butch Lesbians and Gender Queer people.)
3. How can I put this?  Bookselling isn’t generic retail, folks. It’s specific.  Sure, you can scroll through endless lists for recommendations, but you need a real, live person to tell you if those recommendations (often paid for by the publicist or publisher) are bogus or on the mark.  Really, if you love cats, poetry and humor, an algorithm might not direct you to I Could Pee On This – but I would.    And that sells books.  I mean, I know I’ve talked about a lot here, but isn’t selling books the point?  Readers don’t want to be “deployed” to.  They want to talk to someone they trust.

I haven’t even touched on the cash flow nightmare owing only a few gigantic vendors would cause for hundreds of bookstores, or the jobs that will be lost when this merger deems the additional sales reps, credit reps, editors, publicists and eventually entire imprints “redundant.”

The only (and I do mean only) tiny, infinitesimal scrap of light this trend allows through the gathering clouds is the small hope that Amazon and its unregulated Monopoly could possibly have to actually participate in the economy rather than suck it dry.

But that is a very small consolation prize.  Like getting an ice cream cone after watching your house burn down.  For the record, I’m requesting chocolate.  With sprinkles.  And a waffle cone at the very least.

Bookstore Makeover Post #4 – Paint

For those of you who know Kris and me well enough, it will come as no surprise to you that we warmed up to the bookstore makeover by making the impulsive decision to rebuild the back porch stairway on our house using lumber we reclaimed from other parts of our deck.

It’s sort of like stretching out before the big marathon.

(and then I built a drawer cabinet and wheels for the bottom of a pantry for our kitchen)

Ok fine, we’re out of our minds and are incapable of relaxing on our days off.

But we did get the go ahead from our new friends at Paz & Associates to buy some paint.  We decided to go with Sherwin Williams because

a. we had a coupon and

b. my sister Julie works at their distribution center in Effingham, IL, so it’s not exactly local, but it does support my hometown.

As it stands now, the color scheme is “Saguaro,” “Camelback,” and “Sassy Green” with an accent wall for our new kids’ section of “Reflecting Pool.”  Our Sherwin Williams sales person found all of these names ridiculous and slightly obscene as did we, but the colors do look pretty great.

Now, if we can just make them look good on the walls…

Bookstore Makeover Post #3: Overwrought Iron

If you’ve ever met me, you already know that I err on the side of anxiety most of the time.  It should come as no surprise to you that I’m now sitting, surrounded by intelligent, talented booksellers who are devoted to this store and would undoubtedly pitch in with their two cents, and I can’t pick out a light fixture without peeling away several layers of uncertainty.

Maybe I should explain.

Donna, Mark and the fine folks at Paz and Associates are busily working on the master plan for our bookstore makeover, the details of which will be revealed to us very shortly.  Donna called today to ask one simple question – which light fixture do you like for the area over your stairs?  Perhaps she knows me better than I thought she did, because she initially asked for Kris.  It was only because Kris was making a Kakao Chocolate run (for the store, of course…) that the call got passed to me.  After chatting for a minute or two, Donna emailed me with the spectacular drawing of what the stairs will look like.

Pretty cool, huh?!

And then asked me to make a design decision today: Which light should we use over the stairs?  Umm…

I think this has all gone sideways because I have 4 designs from which to choose.  I’ve narrowed them to two designs:

Option 2: Simple, elegant. Sort of masculine, like me (sometimes).

I have juggled several gray hairs’ worth of debt today and have slogged through payroll and a portion of budgeting that makes my nervous tic rear its head.  I’ve even read and passed along information about the ABA’s new deal with Kobo to sell e-books and e-readers and have corresponded with other industry people about said change.

Yet, here I sit, stymied by lighting.  Paralyzed by curves in the wrought iron.  Needless to say, when Kris gets back with the chocolate, I’ll be sifting through the bag for my sea salt caramels while she effortlessly makes a decision, after which I will breath a sigh of relief before taking another stab at those numbers.

Bookstore Makeover Post #2: From Here to There

Kris and I had a long meeting this morning, most of the contents of which I will spare you, but the thing about it I’ve been chewing on for most of the day is the internal struggle we have with staying true to our literary, progressive, queer, sometimes marginalized, sometimes vilified, sometimes celebrated, sometimes ignored roots while facing forward – leaning into the future.

This struggle rears its head pretty often, as expected in a store that is 43 years old and hopes to live longer.  In the decade that I’ve worked here I’ve sometimes felt like I’ve crammed for a quiz, taken it and have somehow fallen short, but most of the time I feel a bone-deep kinship with this store and all of it’s history – both the celebrated parts (Hilary Clinton, Jimmy Carter, opening Downtown and creating a nonprofit are just a few) and the parts we wish we could forget (the onslaught of the chains, the crushing pressure of Amazon, the lean, hard months when payroll is an accomplishment).

This makeover, this gift from our new friends at Paz & Associates, is thrilling.  They really get us and our mission and want to celebrate the best of who we are.  To be the best of who we are requires looking at the mistakes we’ve made head-on, square in the eye and correcting them.  It also requires dreaming of new ways of doing things.

SO…

Let there be light!

After our meeting this morning, I bought a light fixture.

Ok, there’s not a whole lot of light coming from it now, but just wait.  The main feature is that it will bring in some of the historical wrought iron detail from the outside of the building into the store, which I think is pretty cool.

I might have jumped the gun a bit because when I excitedly emailed everyone and told them I had done it the words “plan isn’t quite finished yet” were uttered, so maybe I should slow down.

Anyway, I got to ye olde Central West End, carried in my fixture to several oohs and ahhs of the booksellers on duty and made a trip down the street to Fellenz’s, where I took many measurements of various railings, fixtures and other architectural features.  More on that later – ahem – after we have a plan.

After getting some feedback on my last post, we brought up the need for more seating, which will undoubtedly be part of the grand scheme.

We’re also thinking through how best to do author events in a newly configured space, and how to make the front entrance less overwhelming and cluttered.

You can rest assured, though, the bones and spirit and history of the store will stay intact.  It’s our job to act as the keepers of that spirit and tradition and use it as our compass to guide us into the next 43 years on the corner of Euclid and McPherson.

Bookstore Makeover!

In a twist of fate that somewhat resembles reality TV, our beloved bookstore has won a bookstore makeover by Paz and Associates as they celebrate 20 years in business.  True to indie bookselling form, the budget is minuscule and “re-purposing” will take on a whole new meaning.

Left Bank Books – Central West End

We’ve been drawing, redrawing, haggling, scraping, saving, arguing and planning for a remodel of our store in the CWE for several years now.  We even made an ill-fated stab at it a couple of years ago by trying in vain to bring all the new books upstairs and make the basement – ahem – lower level used books only.

As I said, it was ill-fated.

The bookshelves downstairs must have procreated many years ago and begat many new bookshelves that grew to sizes that are impossible to extricate from the premises without a hacksaw.

We stumbled.  We grew tired.  We moved on.

Until now.

The view from the front door.

The first thing we need to address is the stairs.  ”What?” you may be saying, “I didn’t know you had a downstairs and I’ve been shopping at your store for 15 years!”

Yes.  That’s exactly the problem.  Last year, I made a giant sign to hang above the stairs that says “More Books Downstairs” with a gigantic arrow on it pointing, well, down the stairs.

The thing that happens now:

“What sign?” says the former owner of the store when he came to visit.  Sigh.

The second thing we want to change is the children’s section.

“Wait!” you say, “I love that children’s section.  Don’t lay a finger on it!”

To that I say this:

The children’s section

Books  should not be shelved on the floor.  Also, standing in this section with no place to turn around inspires panicky feelings in my stomach.

We’ll come up with a cool solution for this, too.

The trick will be to manage all this before the start of the holiday season (and around our event with Tony La Russa).

Yeah.  There’s that panicky feeling again.  Stay tuned for more updates as we go!

From the Department of Just This

I was eight when Ronald Reagan was first elected president.  I knew nothing of politics then and frequently wish that I didn’t have to pay attention now.  My first inkling that guys who didn’t wear clip-on ties (and who would probably only visit the dirt road and trailer I called home on some press conference about poverty eradication) actually influenced what happened to me was when my dad got laid off from Merz Sheet Metal.  It was right after Reagan busted the airline strike and deregulated the industry setting the stage for a cascade of deregulation that has birthed companies that are too big to fail and corporations that are considered people.  Did the government directly cause my family’s financial woes? No.  As always, things were more complicated than that.  But the climate made it nearly impossible for Dad to find work.

By the time I was ten, the sound of Reagan’s voice made me sick to my stomach.

Odd, you may say.  This blog is usually about the book selling industry, chock full of railing against Amazon.  Why am I sifting through the ruminations of some middle Illinois hick’s childhood?

Indulge me a while longer.  I promise to get to the point.

I’ve been sitting with the DOJ’s decision about the “anti-trust” lawsuit brought against some in the publishing industry feeling an eerily familiar feeling.  I couldn’t quite place it at first.  Sure, there was disappointment.  Anger.  A touch of bitter resignation and despair.  After all, I was one of the over 800 people who sent public comment letters rationally explaining why creating a diverse marketplace was actually good for consumers and that the success of this lawsuit would only benefit one company – Amazon.  When fellow book lovers and I were unceremoniously dismissed and ignored because we actually know something about the industry and have a hand in keeping it healthy, I had a right to feel kind of pissed off.

Also dubious is the no-bid contract with the state department for a gajillion Kindles.  It’s all so cozy, isn’t it?  So very sewn up.  Finished.  Decided before it was asked.  Yes, I’m angry as both a citizen and a business owner.  I’m almost speechless looking at the blatant, immoral and possibly illegal disregard for the other side of this argument in favor of short-sighted politics.

But there was that other thing.  Something akin to a bruise.  An old one.  Yellowed and spread out over time, sure, but still vaguely painful.  A reminder of earlier flailing against immovable walls.

It’s the eight year old in me who believes in the better angels of our nature and the power of the underdog only to find myself shoved firmly back on the front porch of our trailer drinking Mountain Dew out of the glass bottle, petting one of the dozen cats all named Kitty, knowing life couldn’t be any bigger than my yard because success is against the rules.

Do I sound heartbroken?  It’s because I sort of am.  Nobody likes to watch the other team spike the ball.  But tomorrow will come, and when it does it will come to this:  

Booksellers: No one will help us.  There is no protection.  We are the architects of our own redemption.  If it’s against the rules for us to expand outside our own yards, we must make our yards better.  If the administration-backed mega monopolizer wants to step on us, we must penetrate its boot and become the annoying sharp tack.

Readers:  Love is essential, but it doesn’t pay the bills.  You have to buy local, too.

A Gentle(wo)man’s Profession

Kris, Danielle and I landed in NYC an hour late on Tuesday because in the words of our pilot our plane was “broken” and we had to find another one.  We missed our first appointment and went straight to our temporary digs courtesy of Air BNB where our host met us with a cold beer and his pitch.

Everyone in New York has one, so this came as no surprise, but jumping into a discussion about how he could break into digital-only publishing before we put our bags down didn’t set an auspicious tone for the rest of our trip – which was to condense what we do at ye olde bookstore into a brochure and 30 minute spiel in the hopes of reminding them to send authors our way.

We persevered though.  Danielle had micro-scheduled us with machine-like precision so we did talk to about 100 of the publishing industry’s decision makers – everyone from publicists and editors to assistants and interns (and if you don’t think a competent assistant has power, you obviously have never a.) worked as one or b.) worked with one).

Having me along was overkill.  I don’t typically jump in and talk over anyone, which meant that I was mostly silent, which is actually fine.  My strength is observation.

And here is what I observed:

Women.  Powerful, decisive, funny, intelligent women.  I didn’t do an official census of Simon & Schuster, Penguin, HarperCollins or any of the others (that would have just been creepy) but in almost every case women filled those cubicles AND the corner offices.  The brain power, the holders of institutional knowledge, the creative thinkers – women.

This is no surprise.  Left Bank Books, almost every bookstore in the St. Louis Independent Bookstore Alliance, and many many other independent bookstores in the country are owned at least in part by women and employ lots of women in powerful, decision making positions.

Women read more than men.  Women form book clubs.  Women care more about fiction than men do, but they also read nonfiction.  Women, in large part, drive the industry.

Don’t get me wrong, there are definitely the Sonny Mehtas of the industry, and we met with some really outstanding male publicists this past week.  It’s not an all-girls club, but women are the heart of it.

One of the coolest (and possibly most surreal) parts of our trips to New York are our visits with Kris’ cousin Sallye, who happens to be one of the buyers for Barnes & Noble.  Sitting at a table listening to the two of these powerhouse book people, the Montagues and Capulets of bookselling, talk in tones sometimes as passionate as Romeo and Juliet, about the industry and the books in it is pretty awe-inspiring.  As I’ve said before, I’m not exactly a scintillating conversationalist (which doesn’t matter because the two of them hold forth with an energy that is no joke) so I listen, observe, and learn.

You can’t see the brown pants and black socks here. Just trust me though.

And here’s where a thought struck me, first with Sallye and Kris, and has been percolating in my brain since my conversation with our friend Eve, who also lives in New York but works in the Fashion Industry (I capitalize that because she works with Estee Lauder in the sense that “works with” should also be capitalized – a fact that is hilarious to me when I show up for dinner wearing brown pants, black socks and no apologies).  Anyway, she mentioned that in the Fashion District being “pretty” earns women “intelligence points.”  People take you more seriously if you select the right shoes – like you understand the industry- which is the opposite of her -and almost every other woman on the planet’s- other experiences in other industries.

Flash back to our meetings with the publishers.  These women had the right shoes, too (I guess, but I wore Adidas to a fancy restaurant so how would I know?) and they have equally spectacular brains and instincts, but they and the rest of our industry are being squeezed.  ”Restacked” as our host at one downsized smaller complex of offices put it.

Why?

Here are two industries dominated by women (and some pretty awesome men).  In one – the fashion industry- men have a large place along side women – tandem.  In the other, the domination of the industry is by Amazon (Jeff Bezos) and e-readers  - again Bezos (Kindle), Leonard Riggio (Nook), Steve Jobs (iPad), Joseph Jacobsen (co-founder of E Ink, which was subsequently sold to a Taiwanese concern) etc. to destroy the current model.

“Destroy” might not be the right term to use for B&N at this point.  They do persist with bricks and mortar stores and don’t lock you into their e-book format with the Nook.  Compared to Bezos, Riggio is a book selling champion.

Things have gone sideways indeed, if I (of all people) am cutting a massive corporation slack, but I digress.

I’m not trying to make a case that the Patriarchy has conspired to kill literature (or that the fashion industry is a bastion of feminism).  But isn’t it odd that an almost exclusively male industry (the tech industry) threatens the book?  Like the only way for guys to get back in was to make it about the most powerful… gadget?

I’m not suggesting that e-readers don’t have a big place in the modern reading experience.  In fact, as a last minute add-on, we visited the offices of a company who is re-conceptualizing the e-reading experience to actually work in tandem with independent bookstores (and other “curators”) and give readers who like the digital experience a solid choice besides Amazon.  Exciting stuff.

Exceptions to the rule aside, I just wonder why one industry has been so successful at colonizing and then cannibalizing another.  The winner in these kinds of struggles isn’t always right.  Often it’s just the entity that is unable to use its inside voice. The loudest voices in the room are very often (although not in my case) male.

Books weren’t broken before we all decided what they really were missing were batteries.  Despite being a deeply flawed industry, books (publishing and selling) work because of not in spite of the number of contributing voices.  And it is no coincidence that so many of them are women’s voices.

There’s No Crying In Bookselling

I’m awake in the middle of the night in New York City – not in the Maritime Hotel, where I’d like to be soaking my heat stroked body in a cool Gin & Stormy, but stone sober in my bed reflecting on my day today, and steeling myself for tomorrow’s meetings with Gotham’s bigger publishers.

Ostensibly, we’re here to pitch our more than 200 event per year reading series to their publicity departments so that they’ll send their authors to St. Louis in general, and us in particular.  The reality is that we’re selling the idea that publishers, authors and readers still need bookstores.

Sometimes the act of selling and reselling this idea to other people, especially the publishers (who have found themselves somewhat paddle-less in this dammed up creek of an industry), is invigorating.  Language isn’t just powerful between the covers of a book,  it’s just as powerful in naming your own fate.  In fact, that’s how the purveyors of the notion that the Kindle is Christ returned have succeeded in convincing us that we need to follow, lock step, into the Amazonian future – and that anyone who rejects that notion just doesn’t get it because they’re a luddite or are delusional.  They simply control the conversation.  They spout statistics about the increase in e-Book consumption and seamlessly equate that with Amazon.

They’re good.

Above every conversation involving books, e-books, publishing, writing or reading hangs the specter of the apparently inevitable world domination of one e-tailer.  Even if that’s not what we’re talking about – that’s what we’re talking about.

Yeah, I could go on and on about how they do this – from tax evasion to the DOJ’s bogus anti-trust lawsuit against anyone else trying to sell e-books to the simultaneous no-bid contract with the United States government to buy Kindles.

But what I’m really thinking about tonight is my woodworking shop in my garage at home, and my bicycle that’s waiting for me to ride it, and my son who just got his first tattoo, and the stack of 6 books on my nightstand waiting patiently to be read, and the friendship and respect I feel for the co-workers who surround me every day. A word from our sponsors – This life was brought to you by an independent bookstore.

I guess this is why I’m up in the middle of the night doing our payroll and paying Simon & Schuster before we meet with them tomorrow.  Because as invigorating as changing the conversation is, as necessary as it is to name our own fate, it is also endless and stressful.  Many times too much so.  I can think of a few booksellers who’ve moved on because of it.

But to badly paraphrase Tom Hanks, there’s no crying in bookselling.  So I will close with this, wake up tomorrow, tilt at a windmill or two, and count myself lucky.

Then I might go have a drink.

The Apathy and the Ecstasy

I started my job at Left Bank Books when I was 29 years old – two days after interviewing with owners Kris Kleindienst and Barry Leibman in a borrowed shirt a size too big which I kept tucking in and untucking in the minutes before my interview, trying to decide which way made me look more attractive as a job candidate.  Should I look more business-like?  Tucked.  Or should I look like the ubercool booksellers at the counter?  Untucked.

My terror about the interview lessened as I talked to them about the store.  It’s history and traditions sang to me a siren song tuned specifically to my desires.  We talked, planned and joked through the interview and I knew I was a goner.

Then my terror returned at the end of the interview when I was asked to take the “Bookstore Quiz” – a two page short answer test on titles, authors and the finer points of shelving books.  I froze, and despite having completed an independent study of all of Virginia Woolf’s writing the year before, I could not summon one single title she had written.

When I handed my test back to Kris, I mumbled something about how sorry I was to have wasted their time.  I was hired before I left the building.

We are now ten years past my Left Bank beginning, and I own this dream with Kris.  In those years I have seen writers succeed and fail, publishers rise and fall, bookstores open and close.  The book survives because it is necessary to our democracy.  Access to it is necessary to our democracy.

I tell you this story because I want you to know what my career means to me, and what the notion of independent bookselling means not just to me, but to many thousands of others.

And to ask you a favor.

Right now, the department of justice is proceeding with an antitrust lawsuit against several publishers and Apple over e-books.  I summed this up on my last post here: http://jareksteele.wordpress.com/2012/04/17/feed-the-monster/

Part of the court’s process is that they have to allow for public comment on this issue.  The deadline for this is June 25 – a mere two weeks from now – and even one letter from you (yes you family, friends and customers) will make a difference.

The lawsuit (encouraged in large part by Amazon) says that publishers shouldn’t be able to set the prices on the e-books they publish.  They say this is “price fixing.”

Amazon wants to be able to continue their war against independent booksellers (and lots of other indie businesses) by selling ebooks at a fraction of their cost as a loss leader so they can sell you other products.

The publishers, hundreds of bookstores, and many, many authors and readers want the opportunity to offer these books too – something that becomes impossible when a massive giant sabotages the rest of the industry, creating its own largely tax-free monopoly.

Books – even e-books- aren’t free to produce.  The artist’s work is worth something.  The editor’s work is worth something.  The publicist’s work is worth something.  The bookseller’s work is worth something.  If publishers can’t set a price on their own product to cover these costs, parasites like Amazon can devalue literature until no-one will be able to afford to produce it, and no-one without the money to buy a Kindle will be able to access what is produced.

That is very dangerous.

The enemies of a fair marketplace are betting on public ignorance and apathy here.  If you zone out, click away and forget this, they will be very happy.  But there is a clear right and wrong.  A free market depends on a healthy and vibrant marketplace with plenty of competitors to check and balance each other.  If this lawsuit is successful, only one business will win the right to tell you what to read, and your choices will disappear.

You don’t need to be a bookseller to care about this.

Please write a letter – even if it’s only a few sentences telling the Department of Justice and the Judges that this lawsuit, if successful, will only benefit one corporate giant – which is the opposite of how it’s intended – and send it here:

John Read
Chief, Litigation III Section
Antitrust Division
U.S. Department of Justice
450 5th Street, NW, Suite 4000
Washington, DC 20530

Then send it here:

John.Read@usdoj.gov

Then to be sure your voice is heard, send a copy to dan@bookweb.org (the American Booksellers Association).

For more information, go here:

http://news.bookweb.org/news/aba-members-urged-make-their-voices-heard-re-agency-model

Your grateful bookseller,

Jarek Steele