MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Ursula K. Le Guin: “I keep Asking You Not to Buy Books from Amazon”

gmw · 06-05-2015, 05:21 AM

There's only one thing I don't get about Ursula K. Le Guin's article: Why decry Amazon in particular? Doesn't every bookstore - B&M or online - do exactly the same thing? Walk into, or click into, any book store, and what fills the visual space? Whatever books are currently being pushed as "best sellers".

As far as I can tell the only reason for singling out Amazon is that they have a stake in publishing, as well as selling, and yet there doesn't seem to be anything in her blog that identifies how Amazon's publishing arm impacts the big seller push. As far as I can tell, she could be criticising any person that buys off the front shelves of a B&M store.

There also seem to be some inherent contradictions in the blog article. It appears to be denigrating the best seller machine, but goes on to suggest that it was exactly this mechanism that publishers once used to fund the publication of untried authors. She complains that the BS machine is inherently transient and comments that "But you can't buy and read a book that hasn't been kept in print." And yet a publisher like Amazon can ensure that this never happens.

One might also comment that it was exactly the transient nature of the BS machine that allowed new work to become visible. If there is any complaint to be had of modern book selling, it is that there is no longer any limit to what you might choose to buy, whether it was published yesterday or a hundred years ago. With such a huge and ever growing expanse of books available, how are we ever to choose one from the deluge?

The penultimate paragraph "As a book dealer and publisher, Amazon wants no competitors, admits no responsibilities, and takes no risks." appears to be, perhaps, the essence of her complaint. But the way I see it, one of the reasons why Amazon has been such a success is that traditional publishers have applied exactly these rules to their own business. Traditional publishers could have done much more to embrace the technology and use it to everyone's advantage, instead they have left that to Amazon and others.

06-05-2015, 05:21 AM	#43
gmw cacoethes scribendi Posts: 5,818 Karma: 137770742 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Australia Device: Kobo Aura One & H2Ov2, Sony PRS-650	There's only one thing I don't get about Ursula K. Le Guin's article: Why decry Amazon in particular? Doesn't every bookstore - B&M or online - do exactly the same thing? Walk into, or click into, any book store, and what fills the visual space? Whatever books are currently being pushed as "best sellers". As far as I can tell the only reason for singling out Amazon is that they have a stake in publishing, as well as selling, and yet there doesn't seem to be anything in her blog that identifies how Amazon's publishing arm impacts the big seller push. As far as I can tell, she could be criticising any person that buys off the front shelves of a B&M store. There also seem to be some inherent contradictions in the blog article. It appears to be denigrating the best seller machine, but goes on to suggest that it was exactly this mechanism that publishers once used to fund the publication of untried authors. She complains that the BS machine is inherently transient and comments that "But you can't buy and read a book that hasn't been kept in print." And yet a publisher like Amazon can ensure that this never happens. One might also comment that it was exactly the transient nature of the BS machine that allowed new work to become visible. If there is any complaint to be had of modern book selling, it is that there is no longer any limit to what you might choose to buy, whether it was published yesterday or a hundred years ago. With such a huge and ever growing expanse of books available, how are we ever to choose one from the deluge? The penultimate paragraph "As a book dealer and publisher, Amazon wants no competitors, admits no responsibilities, and takes no risks." appears to be, perhaps, the essence of her complaint. But the way I see it, one of the reasons why Amazon has been such a success is that traditional publishers have applied exactly these rules to their own business. Traditional publishers could have done much more to embrace the technology and use it to everyone's advantage, instead they have left that to Amazon and others.