Many of you have seen the clip by now from last night's The Colbert Report.
Sherman Alexie suggests you boycott Amazon because of a fight between his, and Colbert's, publisher Hatchette and Amazon. What many of you might not know is the hundreds of thousands of small businesses sell on Amazon Marketplace. My household is one of them. When my partner came home this evening, he was dismayed that he hadn't sold a single book. He deals in used and rare, mostly out of print books on sites like Amazon and ABEBooks. This is his sole source of income and it makes up 50% of our household income. When I told him about Colbert he was concerned. His audience is likely the same audience as Stephen Colbert and Sherman Alexie. He watched the clip and immediately posted this to his facebook:
I thought it was strange that I hadn't sold a book online all day. Then I found out Sherman Alexie went on The Colbert Report and told everyone "Don't buy anything on Amazon" because of the company's latest dispute with a publisher/distributor. I appreciate the anti-Amazon sentiment on many levels, but when you buy used books through them, 85% of it goes to independent merchants such as myself. It was a careless and reactionary thing to say and I have no doubt it's affected my sales. Yes, i know the reality is that I am technically in cahoots with an objectively vile corporation, but there's no need to hurt people like me over some bullshit bottom-line squabble with another multinational (Hachette).
I hope this sheds some light on something that some people tend to be listening to. Please don't hurt small business people to fight the fight of another big corporation. If you want to boycott Amazon for its very bad labor practices, boycott Amazon itself and especially Prime. Only shop from sellers who ship to you directly.