The Rumpus.net » amazon http://therumpus.net Books, Music, Movies, Art, Politics, Sex, Other Sun, 27 May 2012 16:41:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 “The Devil’s Checks Never Bounce” http://therumpus.net/2012/04/the-devils-checks-never-bounce/ http://therumpus.net/2012/04/the-devils-checks-never-bounce/#comments Mon, 09 Apr 2012 18:15:33 +0000 Lisa Dusenbery http://therumpus.net/?p=99933 Salon takes a closer look at Amazon’s (quiet) practice of giving grants to small publishers and literary nonprofits, questioning whether Amazon is “backing book culture or buying off critics.”

“At a time when independent publishing is struggling to survive, in part due to the influence of Amazon, recipients say that these grants offer crucial — if ironic — life support.”

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2012/04/the-devils-checks-never-bounce/feed/ 0 Publishing Anxieties http://therumpus.net/2012/01/publishing-anxieties/ http://therumpus.net/2012/01/publishing-anxieties/#comments Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:00:30 +0000 Lisa Dusenbery http://therumpus.net/?p=96748 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.

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2012/01/publishing-anxieties/feed/ 0 Amazon, Coming to a Bookstore Near You? http://therumpus.net/2012/01/amazoncoming-to-a-bookstore-near-you/ http://therumpus.net/2012/01/amazoncoming-to-a-bookstore-near-you/#comments Fri, 27 Jan 2012 19:30:39 +0000 Lisa Dusenbery http://therumpus.net/?p=96465 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.”

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2012/01/amazoncoming-to-a-bookstore-near-you/feed/ 0 Avoiding Amazon in 2012 http://therumpus.net/2012/01/avoiding-amazon-in-2012/ http://therumpus.net/2012/01/avoiding-amazon-in-2012/#comments Wed, 11 Jan 2012 21:20:51 +0000 Lisa Dusenbery http://therumpus.net/?p=95189 “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.

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2012/01/avoiding-amazon-in-2012/feed/ 1 On the “Elf Slaves of Online Shipping” http://therumpus.net/2011/12/on-the-elf-slaves-of-online-shipping/ http://therumpus.net/2011/12/on-the-elf-slaves-of-online-shipping/#comments Tue, 20 Dec 2011 21:42:55 +0000 Lisa Dusenbery http://therumpus.net/?p=93909 “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.

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2011/12/on-the-elf-slaves-of-online-shipping/feed/ 0 A Bit More on Amazon http://therumpus.net/2011/12/more/ http://therumpus.net/2011/12/more/#comments Fri, 16 Dec 2011 14:00:55 +0000 Lisa Dusenbery http://therumpus.net/?p=93633 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.”

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2011/12/more/feed/ 2 More on Amazon’s Assholery http://therumpus.net/2011/12/more-on-amazons-assholery/ http://therumpus.net/2011/12/more-on-amazons-assholery/#comments Tue, 13 Dec 2011 18:39:34 +0000 Lisa Dusenbery http://therumpus.net/?p=93347 “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.”

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2011/12/more-on-amazons-assholery/feed/ 0 Amazon Redefines Dick Move http://therumpus.net/2011/12/amazon-redefines-dick-move/ http://therumpus.net/2011/12/amazon-redefines-dick-move/#comments Tue, 06 Dec 2011 22:47:11 +0000 Brian Spears http://therumpus.net/?p=92982 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.

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2011/12/amazon-redefines-dick-move/feed/ 22 Better Late Than Never http://therumpus.net/2011/10/better-late-than-never-3/ http://therumpus.net/2011/10/better-late-than-never-3/#comments Tue, 25 Oct 2011 15:40:01 +0000 Stephen Elliott http://therumpus.net/?p=90138 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.

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]]> http://therumpus.net/2011/10/better-late-than-never-3/feed/ 0 The Latest in Amazon Ventures http://therumpus.net/2011/09/the-latest-in-amazon-ventures/ http://therumpus.net/2011/09/the-latest-in-amazon-ventures/#comments Tue, 13 Sep 2011 14:00:40 +0000 Sam Riley http://therumpus.net/?p=87237 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.

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