The Authors Guild argues that the book publishing “ecosystem” is in a precarious situation, largely due to Amazon’s growing industry dominance, which they put in the context of a more general abandonment of protections for non-consumer markets against monopolies.

You know Amazon? Our tax-evading (can someone please send them “The Throwaways”?), anti-union redefining, sweat-shop aspiring overlord. Remember how they tried to enlist us all in their war on local stores? They have a new trick up their sleeve. The online giant will begin distributing its adult books through Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s New Harvest imprint. Here’s a bit more on the deal, including reactions from bookstores.

“The thing that really sad about this is they’ve asked one of our most respected publishers to do this.”

“Many people assume that if you want e-books, you’ve got to buy them from Amazon or another online retailer. They’re wrong about that. You most certainly can purchase e-books from your local independent bookstore. I’ve done it myself several times since I made my resolution to avoid buying them from Amazon if at all possible.”

If you’re in the market for e-books, yet share both our disgust at Amazon’s practices and preference for supporting local booksellers, Laura Miller’s Salon article is a helpful read.

“It’s worth considering how the hell those goods get to you, so fast, and for free, when the company you bought them from is posting profits in the millions, or even, in the case of Amazon, billions.”

At Mother Jones, Mac McClelland explains why we should remember the warehouse employee–working overtime at low pay in workplaces that have been deemed “unsafe” and “designed to crush employees’ spirits”–before placing an order with an online retailer.

This week has seen a lot of Amazon talk around the Internet. After Richard Russo’s New York Times op-ed on Amazon’s predatory practices, Farhad Manjoo responded at Slate, arguing against independent booksellers. Russo continued the conversation yesterday with an open letter to Manjoo, nudging the discussion towards an examination of “the true costs of what we purchase.”

“Thanks to technology, we have interesting questions to ask ourselves about what we’ll buy this year, and where and why. Our job, Mr. Manjoo’s and mine, is not so much to answer those questions as to articulate them clearly.”

“As I see it, the problem with Amazon stems from the fact that though it started out as a bookseller, it isn’t anymore, not really. It sells everything now, and it sells it all aggressively. Maybe Amazon doesn’t care about the larger bookselling universe because it’s simply too big to care.”

The New York Times tackles Amazon’s latest “promotion,”  (which we recently condemned), collecting the reactions of writers and booksellers.

At the The Atlantic, Vannessa Veselka looks at Amazon from the inside, documenting her experience “salting,” or getting a job with the intent of unionizing employees. She discusses the company’s plan to become the “Walmart of the Internet,” which was known from within as “Project Fargo.”

“Today, I think Amazon probably did know about me, and that what they knew was that I was essentially harmless. I was more valuable for my production speed than dangerous for my organizing. But to make the case that Amazon is anti-union barely approaches relevance. Most companies are anti-union, that’s not important right now. What made Amazon unique was the way in which it was.”

We are no fans of Amazon here at The Rumpus. When we link to books we review, we link to small publisher websites or spdbooks.org or Powell’s. We’ve written about the online behemoth’s desire to avoid collecting sales taxes in California multiple times. The Daily Show’s John Oliver recently did a piece on how the California initiative process makes it harder for the state government to deal with fiscal crises and how Amazon is currently exploiting that process in an attempt to stop the state from forcing them to collect sales tax.

I want to emphasize that for a second–this isn’t a tax on Amazon. This is sales tax, which you would pay if you went into any store in California and purchased something. Amazon doesn’t want to collect it because it would lessen the competitive advantage they currently hold over local retailers.

But Amazon isn’t satisfied with that. Nope, they want to run local stores completely out of business, it seems. They have announced that they “will pay customers $5 to go into a local store, scan an item, walk out, and buy the same item on Amazon.” Gawker responds with “By all means use Amazon – they have amazing selection! – but there’s no need to be a tacky jerk to your neighborhood store in the process. Unless that store is a Wal Mart, Target, or American Apparel, in which case go to town (by which we mean, go out of town).” I don’t know. I get the sentiment–pit the big retailers against each other–but really, I don’t think I can bring myself to do it. Amazon can bite me.

OK, this is really old, but Danny Sullivan’s letter to Amazon on June 30, when Amazon discontinued their California affiliate program, is still worth reading.

Amazon is introducing a new service that presents a noncommittal book-buying option for customers. The company is considering a Netflix-like rental service for ebooks, which unfortunately, only provides more opportunity to devalue books. And this devaluing has only caused publishers to be skeptical of this rental-based selling point for ebooks. Let’s hope it doesn’t do to booksellers what Netflix did to the video store.

Politics and Prose in D.C. is exemplifying the latest in indie bookstore innovation—they’re introducing the printed-on-demand book. Apparently it takes six minutes to turn over a print book, and customers can watch it happen. And it’s all made possible by an Espresso Book Machine. It seems like with every crafty offering that Amazon makes (like introducing a chat with the author option on ebooks), stakes are raised with booksellers everywhere, but at least bookstores are staying crafty.

The whole system of American outsourcing has rendered our industry incapable of producing the next technological innovation, which unfortunately is the key to reconstructing our economy.

One example of this is the Kindle. Amazon doesn’t have the means for the next generation of their techy product to be produced on domestic soil. This article sources all aspects of the Kindle, an amalgam of parts from different countries (its flex circuit connectors are from China, its display is made in Taiwan, its wireless card is from South Korea, etc.). This outsourcing is apparently just at the precipice of an economic downward spiral that ends in loss of our “ability to innovate.”

Amazon.com has been battling with states across the country over whether or not the company should collect sales taxes. The company’s practice of not collecting sales taxes in most states makes it difficult for brick-and-mortar stores to compete with their prices, and also keeps tax revenue out of states’ coffers in a time when many are struggling with budget deficits.

Many states are fighting back with so-called “Amazon laws,” which require online retailers to collect sales tax if they have physical affiliates within the state.

Illinois recently passed the Mainstreet Fairness Bill. Amazon has countered by threatening to terminate relationships with affiliates in Illinois and in other states with similar legislation. The Alliance for Main Street Fairness has launched this web site to connect affiliates “about to get thrown under the bus” with other online retailers who do collect sales taxes.

Last fall, Texas sent Amazon a bill for $269 million dollars in back taxes. Amazon responded by closing their Texas warehouse, and the dispute is still unsettled.

By 2012, online retailers will owe states an estimated $23 billion dollars in uncollected sales taxes.

“But even before the official pub date, The Coming Insurrection benefited from an ‘endorsement’ from Glenn Beck. As part of a seven-minute rant on Fox News in July, he said, ‘I am not calling for a ban on this book. It’s important that you read this book.’

“Since then, each time Beck has talked about the book, sales have spiked, according to MIT Press associate publicist Diane Denner. It’s latest jump came after Beck devoted an entire segment to The Coming Insurrection, which he called ‘quite possibly the most evil thing I’ve ever read.’”

Thanks to Bookninja, I was delighted to learn that Glenn Beck is inadvertently helping a recent book of anarchist polemic, The Coming Insurrection, published by the respectable leftist house Semiotext(e) vault up the bestseller list.

The big news this week was the iPad announcement, including the tech-world’s dismissal of it. (Fraser Speirs addresses that nicely.) But there’s a lot more happening in the world of e-books.

For example, NASA just opened an e-book section and its first offering is a history of the X-15 hypersonic test aircraft.

And the Library of Congress has made Harry Houdini’s books available through Google Books.

Ursula K. Le Guin is still pissed at the Google Books settlement, and is sending a petition to the judge in charge of the case.

And if you missed it, Amazon and MacMillan Publishing are now at war over book prices. Cory Doctorow and John Scalzi has two posts, one on e-book pricing and Amazon and the latest on why Amazon might have done this on a Friday.

Amazon reports that Kindle Books outsold real books on Christmas day (and Mashable shows why that’s just PR smoke and mirrors).

An argument for schools to stop blocking social networking sites.

Crime reporters in Mexico face deadly peril.

The Society of Professional Journalists slams “checkbook journalism.” (via MediaBistro)

A Chinese novelist is suing Google over its books project. (via PW)

The book blogs are full of awesome this week. You should read them.

How to write to an editor: “I have given your request for evidence 23 hours of thought, the proper number of hours to come up with the right proof. I have sent you the original life experiences behind the proem telepathically just a few seconds ago.”

Maps! Maps! Maps! Jam Continents and California the Island! Yay!

1/3 of French people want to be writers! I like France. (en francais and via)

Amazon settles for $150,000 with kid whose notes were made unreadable when Amazon took his version of 1984 and Animal Farm, ruining his term paper.

When two people showed up at one of his readings in Petaluma, Tao Lin started interviewing the audience members.

And in some not so awesome news, is Barnes and Noble pressuring authors to link to their site? (via)

Your humble Rumpus Sunday Editor is smitten. Over the last couple weeks, the book blogs have been in form, publishing intelligent, hilarious, insightful, and riveting posts. In a word, they’ve been brilliant. Some, but most certainly not all, of my evidence is below.

Maud Newton takes on the way we see E-books.

The Hate Mail Dramatic Reading Project (Peter Lorre impression included). (via)

“There are places where the historical record has gaps. That’s what art is there for.” — Toni Morrison quoted by Jane Ciabattari over at Critical Mass.

Eileen Miles on Can Xue. ”Can Xue’s doing this surrealism of the body. It’s a surrealism that comes like a hallucination out of suffering and deprivation and loss.”

Slaughterhouse90210: Snapshots of bad TV with literary captions. Brilliant. (via)

Sam Pink at <HTMLGIANT> on relatability.

And in the world of book news, how will Zappos, with its famously “upbeat, sometimes goofy corporate culture” that occasionally includes “shots of vodka at Claim Jumpers,” influence Amazon now that they are owned by the e-retail giant? In a sidenote, does anyone else think vodka shots at Claim Jumpers sound like a terrible, terrible punishment?

It’s Saturday morning. Get the sleep out your eyes and start clicking.

Farhad Manjoo has some solid ideas on how to beat the Kindle. Now, if only Amazon’s competitors will listen.

There is great sadness in Sequoia National Park, at least for someone.

Do you love car chase scenes in movies? They look a lot different on Google Maps.

If you’re planning a terrorist attack, don’t dress up like Ghostbusters, because the neighbors will turn your asses in. (Via Harpers)

David Simon makes the case for why tv ratings no longer matter.

This article on the politics of hair is fascinating, and I have no doubt the Chris Rock-produced documentary it references will be as well.

The Dallas Cowboys spent a bajillion dollars on a new stadium this year, but put the giant tv screens low enough to the field that punters can hit them. Deadspin has a drinking game for that..

My housemate just sent me a link to a fascinating web site called The Book Seer. The site asks you to enter the last book you read, and then it compiles book recommendations from Amazon, BookArmy, and LibraryThing.

What was interesting wasn’t the recommendations, per se, but rather what the recommendations said about each of those web sites and how I reacted to what I saw. …more

In San Francisco there’s a great little indie bookstore called Borderlands Books, which sells science fiction, fantasy, and horror titles. In a recent newsletter, store founder Alan Beatts offered his perspective on the Kindle and Amazon’s power to unpublish titles on the devices.

The Rumpus obtained permission to publish an edited version of that portion of the newsletter especially for you. Aside from my note at the end, all text following the jump is by Beatts; all links were chosen by him except for those pointing to Rumpus articles.

After catching his readers up on the incident, Beatts begins:

…more

This week, the book blogs are scaring the ever-loving Jesus out of me.

Sure, there have been a few fun, interesting updates and interviews, but most of what they’ve been saying makes me want to build a series of tunnels in and around my house so that I can start planning the first push of the resistance. Either that or I’ll just hang out at home with the willies and watch Casablanca over and over until I actually believe I’m Humphrey Bogart. Today, my longer posts will be about more hopeful things. But enter the roundup at your own risk. …more

I read stories like this one, where Amazon has gone onto their subscribers’ Kindles and removed books (refunding the purchase price, but still) because the publisher decided they didn’t want to make the books available electronically anymore, and I wonder what the company is thinking.

The calculus might work this way–Kindle subscribers are a small part of Amazon’s business model right now, and the people who had purchased those books (George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984) are an even smaller part, so the relationship with the publisher is more important than the one with that small subset of subscribers. After all, even the ones who are pissed off at Amazon’s actions aren’t likely to dump their subscriptions after plunking down serious bucks for the hardware. In the short term, Amazon’s move makes sense. …more

by Peter Selgin

Not long ago a writer friend emailed me in distress. She had gotten an Amazon customer review for her new novel, which I’d read in manuscript and admired. The one-star review panned the work as sentimental and derivative. What made the review so damning was that it was intelligent and well-written, therefore hard to dismiss. Worse, it was the only review she’d gotten so far. …more

“There will be increasing recognition that “retailing” (having, selling, collecting, fulfilling) the file doesn’t entitle a vendor to nearly the same margin that “retailing” a physical product does. The days of retailers getting a pbook-like discount for ebook transactions are not going to last much longer.” Has Amazon already reached their high-water mark for ebook sales?

Amazon posts its best season ever, selling enough Breaking Dawn books that “stacked end to end they would reach the summit Mt. Everest 8 times. (via The Stranger)

Bill Kristol’s contract is expiring at The New York Times.

Editorial cartoonists endure big job layoffs. See also Ted Rall’s letter to Time Magazine.

Big openings doesn’t mean big box office.

It’s better to belong to a union: Four days after telling non-union employees they must take an unpaid leave of abscence, the Seattle Times is freezing thier pension. (via Poynter)