How I learned to love Amazon and why that might change

From the day Amazon first appeared on the web, I disliked the company. I didn’t care for the whole concept of selling books at a deep discount. I had this smug “principle” thing going; I believed Amazon was out to destroy the independent bookstore.

I guess the attitude came from my youth.

Many years ago, folks in my hometown bought their meat at the local butcher shop, their vegetables, their baked goods from the side door of a house where a little old lady baked things daily, their bread from a local baker who delivered by truck every day, and their canned goods and other foods from the locally owned market. One day a big sign went up three miles away, on the main highway, announcing the groundbreaking for A Big Supermarket. This was a huge deal for a small town. The advent of a one-stop shop with low prices was the topic of conversation for months, and the words were not always encouraging for A Big—at least the words from the mouths of the butcher, the baker and the little bread maker and friends. The people feared their personal relationship with the local vendors would disappear because A Big would drive them out of business.

They were right.

Sales at the A Big were slow to start but within a few months, residents were driving the few miles every couple of days to purchase all their food. Not long after, the butcher closed his shop, the bread maker laid off most of his help, the general grocery too, and the baker stopped baking. (To be fair here, I think she died but some blamed A Big for that.)

In essence, A Big drove the independent businesses out of business.

I missed getting a free cupcake; I missed watching the butcher make sausages in the middle of the store; I missed the handful of red cherries the grocer let me sample while picking up our orders. I missed walking to the store every day.

Then something tragic happened.

A Big decided traffic in their big store wasn’t good enough. After about two years, they closed the store.

This is why I disliked the idea of Amazon.

Smugly, I relished every report of losses Amazon suffered in the beginning days, months and years. I hoped the experiment would result in a total failure.

Of course, that didn’t happen. Bit by bit, the company grew, diversified, grew some more and eventually turned red ink into black, making investors very happy.

And bit by bit, as Amazon flourished, independent bookstores began to fade into the proverbial sunset.  And turned to Amazon for titles my local library didn’t carry.

Eventually, I learned to like Amazon. Good prices, great selection, fast delivery—what’s not to like, especially when there’s no independent (new) bookstore in this city? 

Then, I read an eye-opening blog post about how Amazon is “banning” books. Well, not books, per se but ebooks, and not banning, exactly. These aren’t necessarily the kind of books I would read but the idea of removing them from inventory doesn’t sit well with me, especially since this is being done without clear guidelines or reason.

What’s even scarier to me is that after delisting certain titles, Amazon might also have removed the titles from consumer kindles. (This information came from a comment on the blog post noted above so I can’t confirm that it actually happened. However, kindle owners know they are just paying to borrow their titles.)

I know. I know. Amazon is a business and as such can decide what to sell and what not to sell, and that’s what they’ve done. They’re not banning; they’re just not selling.

But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.

If I want to read any of the delisted titles, I’ll surf over to Barnes and Noble where the authors report their Amazon-delisted books are selling better than ever.