Sales Stealer

It’s finally the last week of August! This month has been insanely long and has led to some very interesting situations for me, but it’s been a good month, nonetheless. I hope you’ve all been learning a lot from this series. I know it hasn’t exactly been the easiest topic to focus on, but from the response I’ve gotten, it sounds like it was something you all needed to find out more about. I’m glad to have filled that void for you.

This week, I have two things to talk to you about, that I want to remind you of, because you really should know them already.

Amazon Takes Sales from Everyone

If you didn’t know that, you really must’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few years. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t shop on Amazon. Know what that means? Those people are not shopping other places. So money that would normally have been spent in shops or stores in town is now spent online, and it all goes to one big company: Amazon.

That’s not a good thing, unless you’re Amazon.

See, our economy was not designed so that everyone would shop in one place and give their money to one store. It was intended that people should shop at many places, that small businesses would receive a very large portion of people’s spending dollars. The United States was built off small businesses. It’s our backbone. We even have systems in place to prevent monopolies, so that small businesses can still afford to operate. (I’m going to try really hard to not make this political… but man I have opinions on this stuff) Cities operate on businesses: small, medium, and large. But if everyone is taking their shopping to Amazon, then those businesses that keep your city running… well, they struggle.

If you’re a constant Amazon shopper, you’re contributing to that struggle.

The thing is, Amazon is convenient. They give you two day shipping if you pay them a large stipend once a year. You can shop in your underwear, whatever you want.

But many small businesses now allow you the same thing, or very near to it. Sure, you’ll have to pay for shipping, but here’s the thing: you’re paying for shipping if you’re paying for Prime. That’s what that big payment is. You’re paying them to ship things for you. And if you’re like me, and you really only buy a few things there in a year, then you’re not getting your money’s worth. And, let's be honest, you have to get dressed to go to work, so why not go shopping while you've got your clothes on?

Let’s take this to the publishing scene.

Do you know how many bookstores there are in your city? How many of them have you been to? Which ones do you shop at? Can you even answer those questions?

Sure, Amazon is hurting a lot of companies with their sales strategy, but do you know how badly they’ve hurt the bookstore industry? Thousands and thousands of local and privately owned bookstores have been forced to close their doors because people would rather buy their books from Amazon than from a local store.

We should never have allowed that to happen.

Oh, and by the way, in my experience Amazon has not been packaging their books properly anymore, so the majority of them that I’ve ordered in the last year (before I stopped altogether a few months ago) came damaged. So if you’re one of those people who orders books because you can’t trust the store to find you an undamaged copy, please realize that Amazon won’t guarantee an undamaged copy either.

We need bookstores. We really do. People love to read, and I know lots of people who prefer to go to a bookstore rather than shop online,. You’ll find a million more options in a store, options that Amazon’s algorithm won’t show you, options that you wouldn’t find if you were to do a Google search. So why not go to a store?

The moral of the story is, we need to be shopping local. We need to be taking our business to other stores, other businesses, and set Amazon aside for a while. If we keep giving them 100% or even 50% of our book sales, we’re putting more and more local stores out of business. We’re hurting our local economy, and in turn, our national economy. 

What's more, we're hurting the authors behind the books that we love. 

Let’s not let that happen.

[love]

{Rani Divine}