http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/13/opinion/amazons-jungle-logic.html
I don't particularly care about the market research aspect of it, because that kind of stuff has been going on forever. Anyone remember those graphic design "competitions" where students could enter to "win" a cash prize worth a tenth of what a professional designer would have charged? Sleazy as hell, but there are bigger issues at hand. The whole exploiting rival businesses' overhead while pricing your own items at below cost (or more frequently, forcing your suppliers to) to obliterate the competition thing? That I have a problem with. I wasn't going to write about it though. Enough bloggers have railed against this despicable promotion as it is, and I think most people agree that it's majorly screwed up. Plus, by internet standards this is old news. Oh yeah, also I didn't want to (I can be pretty aggressively lazy when I put my mind to it).
So now that I've bored you with half a paragraph about why I wasn't going to write a blog on this particular topic, you are probably (justifiably) wondering why I went ahead and did it anyway. You know that article I linked to about three inches ago? Go read the comments section. That's why. To highlight a few:
"The tone of the article and some comments border on snobbery from groups that are unable or unwilling to adapt to technology. A book isn't a real book unless you've searched for it in a dusty, main street store with a quaint name, and had long discussions about it over tea. Anything you buy with a mouseclick that gets delivered in a truck to your door isn't a 'real' book.
I can remember when email was starting to gain traction. Elitist detractors eschewed the impersonal bits and bytes delivered over a wire. So much would be lost without a personal phone call, or handwritten note, they said.
The method of purchase or delivery, in my opinion, doesn't matter. The wonder of a novel lies within the pages itself. If a child is enjoying a book I don't care how it got to their hands.
The independent bookseller will always exist, although perhaps in smaller numbers, for those who want that experience. Society is benefitted as a whole by big-box retailers because it increases efficiency. Instead of driving down to that local bookshop, finding parking, walking through the store, and waiting in line, perhaps you could buy online, and use that time saved to read MORE books." - Arthur, New York, NY
"Sorry Mr. Russo - you just don't get it. Many times buying a book at 17$ instead of 35$ is the difference between buying the book and not buying the book. Some people who read and care about books can not pay the higher price. So what if they will not have a bookseller to recommend books, they can always fall back on Dickens, Poe, Tolstoy or read the Book Review in the NYT.
Perhaps you and your Best-Seller friends are further out of touch than you realize." - Oliver, Chicago
Some people who read and care about books want recommendations beyond the classics and the New York Times Book Review. Perhaps, Oliver, you are further out of touch than you realize.
"So... bookstores to survive selling books more expensive, want to prevent consumers from obtaining information about where they can buy them cheaper. This is very interesting. It is the same tactic used by totalitarians governments: to suppress bad news, instead of trying correct the source of the problems, they blame and censor the messenger. At the end of course we all know that this type of approach is dead on arrival. Information is always good. Besides, why would you pay more for exactly the same product? The answer is that you wouldn't" - Western Iconoclast, San Francisco
The majority of this statement is so clearly idiotic that it doesn't bear comment, so I'm just going to jump to the end on this one. "Why would you pay more for exactly the same product?" the commenter asks. It's a fair question. You are not paying more for the same product in a brick and mortar, you are paying more for the product plus a small fraction of the overhead that goes in to providing you with a service many find valuable. If you don't value the service, that is completely fine. Just don't use it! Continue to shop on Amazon and enjoy. That is your right. You should not, however use the service--in this case, the knowledgeable staff, the warm place to hang out, and the ability to look through (and probably damage) a book before purchasing it--if you do not value it enough to pay for it. You wouldn't go into a restaurant, sit at a table, eat the free bread, and browse the menu, only to say "Ooh, an apple and brie sandwich! Never thought of that. Well, I'm off to go make it for cheaper at home."
People referring to small stores as "overpriced" has been a stick in my craw for quite some time. Yes, boutique shops that buy a bunch of crap downtown then stick a label on it and octuple the price deserve to be called overpriced, but that is most often not the case. Most of the time stores charge what they do because that is how much it costs them to purchase the item, pay their employees, make rent, and still turn a small but livable profit. I know many small business owners; it is not a glamorous job, and not one of them charges more than they absolutely have to to stay in business. It is corporations like Wal Mart, Target, and Amazon that create this "overpriced" illusion. If goods are available elsewhere for less, than they must be overpriced, right? This is dangerous logic. What consumers really should be asking is, "Why is Wal Mart so underpriced? What kind of shady business practices are allowing them to charge three dollars for an eight-dollar item? Who must they be disenfranchising to get their overhead so low?" Impossibly low prices should be considered a red flag, not a stroke of luck. But we don't want to ask those questions, because a healthy economy, more (fair-wage-paying) jobs, and human interaction in the long run isn't worth a few extra dollars in the short run.
