I'm comming at this from a place of bias, I like local bookstores and shops in general, they employ local people, add to the culture of a town and give me an experience I don't get from Amazon.
I also dislike Amazon's extremely poor employee practices, the stress they put their staff under, stack ranking, the unfair tax breaks they get etc.
But, there are 2 books I want. Neither are available in store, meaning at least a weeks wait. In store they are €65 and €45. On Amazon They are €30 and € 25. That's a €45 difference. I often pay more in a store for a book in stock, but €45 is a lot to hand out to support local book stores and still have to wait for shipping.
I still don't feel right considering getting these books from Amazon.
What are people's thoughts on this?
by Outrageous-Ad4353
2 Comments
All this talk about local bookstores is so weird to me.
Like, how often did people visit local bookstores to buy books before anyway? If you wanted a new release you would call them and make the order cause you couldnt even count theyd have it. And its not like their employees were some fantasy version of Meg Ryan sipping latte and doing smalltalk about books with you. They were usually just underpaid kids.
Theres something very graphic and cozy about imagining a small bookstore, but those shops never existed outside of movies, and the few that did barely survived even before ordering books was so accessible.
Buy local, from Amazon, or go yaar. You dont owe nobody anything.
You’re overthinking this. It’s nice to support local businesses, but there’s no onus on you to do so 100% of the time, especially when there’s such a large price difference. Don’t set yourself on fire to keep others warm: just get your books off Amazon this time.