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Originally Posted by pwalker8
Disconnect? Not really. It seems obvious to me that what the authors mean is that books are not consumer goods from the stand point that people do not go out and buy generic books. They go out and buy the latest J.K. Rowlings or whomever is their favorite author. Sure, there are a handful of people who buy "generic books", some of whom are quite vocal here, but they are outliers. There are some genres where the author isn't nearly as important as the imprint. The old Harlequin romance novels are prime examples, but by in large, the people are looking for something specific when they buy a book. The majority of the time, it's the author's name. That's why authors can move between publishers and people still buy their books at more or less the same rate.
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People do not go out and buy generic cars either. Or generic brands of many, many other products. In fact, economics has a term for this attraction of customers to particular brands. It is called goodwill, and it is often very valuable. It does not mean these products are not consumer goods. But, more importantly, it does not mean that these products are entitled to special treatment and that Amazon is not entitled to refuse to sell them or discriminate in any way against them from its own site. The so-called special snowflake argument, or, for Australians, perhaps we should call it the special grain of sand argument, has been extensively discussed and thoroughly debunked. Is this really the best argument that they can come up with? That
Amazon can do anything in relation to consumer goods on its own site, including refusing to sell them or discounting them. But not books. Because, through some magical but illogical approach, books are somehow not consumer goods because they have a characteristic which is shared with many other consumer goods, including my example of cars.
This letter is signed by a group of people who are supposed to be great communicators. Perhaps you, or Steve, or someone, anyone, can explain to me logically why books are not cousumer goods and what characteristic or characteristics they possess which entitle them to special treatment.