One for the Books
How to Acquire Books Without Supporting an Evil Empire
Today’s Shelf Life is on a topic I think about often and is close to my heart. Since the very beginning, I’ve had a note on my Shelf Life topic list that says, “love/hate relationship with Amazon” and today is the day I tackle it.
I’ll start by once more repeating my oft-repeated sentiment that as a consumer I love Amazon; but as a publisher and a citizen of the planet I do not love Amazon.
My order history with Amazon goes back to when I was in college; I made my first purchase from them in 2000. (I’d bought things from them before but probably using a parent’s account or credit card.) So, I’ve been shopping with Amazon for 23 years. That’s math even I can do.
Amazon was among some of the first online shopping outlets I knew about and used, along with eBay. Unlike eBay, though, you could be pretty sure when you ordered from Amazon that you wouldn’t get scammed and sold a counterfeit item. They mostly sold books at the time and the orders all came from Amazon, not from a random seller with the deal brokered by Amazon (those were the days).
It used to be that if I wanted a specific book, my options for finding that book were:
The big box bookstores (Barnes & Noble, et cetera);
Local independent bookstores;
The local used bookstore; or
The library (and, to one degree further, the university system library).
These are all fine sources for books! Which I will talk about more later!
However, it wasn’t really as easy, at that time, as going online to the store’s or library’s website and searching for the title and seeing how many copies were in stock and exactly what part of the store it was in (and possibly buying online to go pick up in store). Instead I had to either go to these places and physically look for the book, or call ahead and ask about the book—with what felt like a better-than-even chance the associate on the phone would just say, “oh we don’t have that” without checking. The public or academic library could usually get what you wanted with an interlibrary loan if it wasn’t in the stacks, but then you’d have to wait (something I am notoriously bad at).
Then Amazon came along and you could find all the books in the world in one place and you could buy the book and it would come right to your house. Later, the shipping would become free with membership. And then later things started to show up in one or two days. And now you can buy anything on Amazon, and get free shipping, and whatever you bought shows up sometimes on the same day, and it’s really convenient and hard to resist. But at least when I began using Amazon, it was really the only place you could be sure to find unusual or rare titles available for purchase—without having to call all around or dig through the piles at the used bookstore.
That’s the part about how I love Amazon. The reasons why I hate Amazon are numerous; chiefly, I am angry with them because they infringed Demetrious Polychron’s copyright to The Lord of the Rings. Haha just kidding. As a publishing person, I’ve talked about my reasons for disliking Amazon as a retailer and fellow publisher before; at length in Gaming the System. As a human being, I have concerns about their treatment of warehouse and distribution staff. As a book lover I have concerns about Amazon driving indie bookstores and even their big-box bookstore competitors out of business, because I think competition is essential for a vibrant, consumer-friendly market.
Still, I think, when I want a particular lipstick and my CVS and Target have been sold out of it for weeks, it’s hard not to order it from Amazon and get it right on my doorstep in a day or two, and I don’t even have to pay for shipping. On the other hand: Would my CVS and Target be out of this lipstick if people weren’t going there, buying every available unit, and reselling them at a marked-up price on Amazon?
I’ve also noticed that Amazon has warped my expectations somewhat, so ordering from anywhere but Amazon now feels like a huge ordeal because:
I’ll have to wait more than two days to receive my purchase;
I’ll have to pay for shipping;
Other retailers don’t have all my info on file so it takes more effort to complete the purchase process;
I don’t get cash back at other retailers when I use my . . . Amazon credit card.
Clearly that last one is—okay that’s on me. Listen, I’m not going to escape this complex and unhealthy relationship anytime soon. But I will say I’ve implemented some strategies to buy less from Amazon, for instance:
Don’t order things you could run up to the drugstore and get in 10 minutes.
No physical, hard-copy books from Amazon; get those from someone I want to support.
That said, physical books are the least of the books I buy at this point. In fact, I’m actively trying to cut back on the physical books in my home and I have a rule that whenever I bring a new physical book into the house, a physical book must leave the house. (Mostly this means I mail books to friends who are interested in a particular title.)
If you read ebooks or listen to audiobooks it’s even harder to contemplate breaking up with Bezos because Amazon makes it so easy and fast to get them. You order and it’s in your library instantly. Download and start reading or listening. The Amazon app is constantly notifying me about discounts on Kindle books I’ve considered or have on my wish lists. Audible membership makes it ridiculously easy, cheap, and convenient to get audiobooks.
Alright, so: On to the actual topic at hand, which is: If you don’t want to support Amazon, or you want to support Amazon less, what are some good (or the best) alternatives to get one’s hands on physical books, ebooks, and audiobooks? As I compiled these resources I tried to keep in mind the following factors that make Amazon so attractive as a retailer (to me at least):
Free shipping.
Fast shipping (2-3 days).
Broad selection and availability.
No need to leave the house.
Because most alternatives to Amazon don’t have all the above, I also factored in public or social good to my suggestions. Maybe that makes you want to vomit. Your mileage may vary.
Print Books
Print books are the easiest to get anywhere else because their format is not proprietary to Amazon (like a Kindle .azw file) and you don’t need an Amazon-branded “reader” or “player” app to use them. To begin: I’m always a fan of shopping at local, independent bookstores if you have those around you. I’m also a fan of purchasing books from wherever you like to browse books. For instance, if you like to walk around Barnes & Noble and look at books, you should probably buy your books from there; that’s how you pay into the experience of walking around the store and looking at books. If you look at books there (for free) and then divert your purchasing dollars to Amazon (because the same book is cheaper and will arrive on your doorstep tomorrow, anyway!) you contribute to the extinction of the experience you want to access.
And whenever there’s a problematic author whose works you want to acquire but who you do not wish to support, beeline for the used bookstore. Purchasing a used copy is the surest way (other than pirating) to ensure no money goes into that problematic person’s ecosystem.
If you want to purchase print books online and have them delivered, I recommend:
Better World Books sells new and used books online. Shipping is free on orders of $15 or more and $1.49 for orders under $15. If you’re willing to pay a few cents more, you can opt for carbon offset shipping. Each time you purchase a book from Better World Books, they donate a book to someone in need. They also recycle books they can’t sell, reclaim and repurpose old metal library shelving, and fund grants for literacy programs and libraries with their profits. Shipping is not especially speedy; however, anecdotally I’ve always received books in a few days.
Bookshop.org sells new books online through a distributor with the profits from the sale going to the local bookstore of the customer’s choice. Because the books are fulfilled by a distributor and skip the physical shop, you’re not limited to the books your local bookstore has available. There are shipping and sales tax costs, and shipping is not especially speedy.
Ebooks
For a lot of people, Kindle is synonymous with ebook. This is not the case. There’s nothing wrong with using a Kindle or reading Kindle books—in fact, many self-published authors only publish on Kindle because it’s so easy to do—but if you prefer not to support Amazon you can still read ebooks.
First, the Kindle device is not needed to read Kindle books. There are Kindle applications for most electronic devices (phones, tablets, computers) so even if you wish to read Kindle books, you do not need to purchase a Kindle device to do so.
Second, Kindle books come in Amazon’s proprietary file formats—.azw, .azw3, and .kfx—rather than universal file formats like .epub and .mobi. However, you can use third-party software to convert between filetypes. I’ve always used Calibre but there are plenty of solutions for this. This means you can convert your Kindle books into .epub or .mobi files for use on other readers than Kindle. This is to say: Just because you started your ebook journey with Amazon Kindle doesn’t mean you can’t jump ship any time.
Third, Amazon is not the only source of ebooks. You can get ebooks from many other retailers and also from most library systems. Many library systems in the United States are now part of OverDrive, so you can put their Libby app on your phone, tablet, or computer to read ebooks checked out from your library.
Regarding the library: Many library systems will now allow you to sign up for your library card online and start checking out ebooks (and audiobooks) online. The ebooks (and audiobooks) are then delivered electronically, directly to your device, for you reading pleasure. This is not very different at all from creating an Amazon account and purchasing a Kindle book or Audible audiobook. The main differences are
Borrowing from your library is free; and
You don’t own the book permanently.
Libraries provide many valuable public services beyond the loan of books and reading materials. It’s always a social good to support your local public library.
Audiobooks
Like ebooks and Kindle, audiobooks tend to be synonymous with Audible for a lot of people. This is by design—Amazon’s design. Their marketing people worked really hard for that. But, again, there are lots of sources for audiobooks besides Amazon.
As I mentioned just a few lines ago, your local public library almost certainly has audiobooks you can borrow and they are probably not the old book-on-tape (or, later, book-on-CD) construct you might remember from the 1980s and 1990s. Just like ebooks, they’re ordered, delivered, and retrieved from your device automatically and electronically using OverDrive’s Libby app or another app like Hoopla.
What if you want to own the audiobook so you can listen to it over and over? Like Bookshop.org, Libro.fm offers a solution that supports local bookstores. With Libro.fm, you choose the bookstore you would like to support and then purchase audiobooks directly from Libro.fm with the profits going to your bookstore of choice. Like Amazon’s Audible, Libro.fm offers a membership for a monthly fee or allows a la carte purchases of audiobooks. Libro’s membership is $14.99 per month for one audiobook credit plus 30 percent off additional audiobook purchases, which is comparable to Audible’s cost. Then you download the Libro.fm app for Android or iOS to listen to your purchases.
There you have it: Cost-effective, fairly equivalent sources of print books, ebooks, and audiobooks for the discerning consumer. Shelf Life reminds you there’s no truly ethical consumption under capitalism but we can still try.
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