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Powell’s says it won’t sell books on Amazon anymore
- jamisteven 6y agoNot sure this is worthy of being on HN.
- pugworthy 6y agoIf you ever had the opportunity to visit Powell's technical bookstore in the past, you'd find it very worthy. It was an amazing goldmine of books, back before Amazon, and back when university campuses had actual bookstores with actual technical books. When I worked for Rogue Wave Software in the 90's, we took an all-team field trip (rented bus) up to Powell's TB with everyone getting a spending amount to get whatever they wanted.
- phobosanomaly 6y agoReminds me of running to the PO box for the Lindsay's Technical Books catalog when I was a kid. Someday I'll build that milling machine from scratch.
- easytiger 6y ago> by siphoning business from the real world and replacing it with internet commerce. I've got news for you, people want to order on a whim and have it arrive at their home the next day. If you don't offer that then people won't buy from you. In many parts of the world overgrown local busybodies have destroyed "high streets" in attempts to monetize drivers and pad their CV; driving people away.
- rudiv 6y agoAs per TFA, they sell their books online. Personally, having seen how Amazon achieves next-day delivery in markets with poor labour laws, my desire to receive products quickly has receded greatly.
- easytiger 6y agoErr. They took weeks to fulfill orders according to the article, and a lot of the purchases were unsustainable pity purchases. This article shows they are just leveraging underdog marketing appeal.
- qubex 6y agoPeople also want & need to explore physical spaces above and beyond what a recommendation algorithm suggests. People want to have the full experience of being immersed in a space. People want to smell the books. People want to try on clothes and see how they fit and compare them. People don’t want to be drawn in by the short-term convenience of the most convenient price.
- BurningFrog 6y agoSome do want that. But empirically, not enough people want it enough to support a lot of these places.
- easytiger 6y agoSome people do. I collect antique books on natural history and science, so I very well know. But a lot of people do not. Thus the ebook. Clothes are an entirely different thing to books
- WalterBright 6y ago> People want to try on clothes and see how they fit and compare them Sure, but I can't find the clothes I want at the mall, and I can on Amazon. The mall bookstores that used to exist only sold bestsellers. The "bookstore" I like to browse these days is Goodwill. I sometimes bring home a shopping bag full of books, for only a few dollars. I've also bought many "grab bags" of books from Ebay. The Bellevue Public Library has a second hand bookstore attached, where people donate books and the store sells them. I've bought a large number of books from them, and the little old ladies who run it are always charming. Highly recommended! There are a couple "Little Free Libraries" in my neighborhood and I regularly insert scifi in them.
- boudin 6y agoAt the same time I'm quite annoyed that there's plenty of things now that you can only buy on the Internet. I also find Amazon to be an horrible mess. It's hard to know if you're buying something legit or from a shaddy business. I personally always look for a local physical shop first, then a local Internet shop, Amazon being the very last resort. Concerning books, the experience on Amazon is nowhere near as nice as browsing in a good book shop with knowledgable people being able to give advices. I might be an exception and, of course, it depends where you live, but I definitely don't fit in the people you describe.
- nly 6y ago> It's hard to know if you're buying something legit or from a shaddy business. Is this a US problem? In the UK I've never heard anyone ever receive a fake or dodgy product, but I see these complaints on HN in almost every thread about Amazons retail business.
- zwischenzug 6y agoI have, and I’m in the UK.
- HenryBemis 6y agoPlenty of fake electronics, cables, chargers, yes. Same here. But I don't think I've ever bought a fake (counterfeit) book. In that sense though I don't mind buying used books from eBay. Especially if the book I am looking for costs £100+. I can live with a £20 used one.
- michaelt 6y agoA good fake is borderline undetectable. So your friends could have received fakes and not known. It's not like many people would buy several copies of a book or DVD to do a side-by-side comparison of textures and precise colour matching. Or have the equipment to tell apart a CRI 95 LED bulb from a CRI 80 bulb in the same housing. Or tell name-brand nail polish from generic in an identical bottle, or a genuine Apple charger from a good clone. Of course, my experience with Amazon in the UK is it's nowhere near as bad as AliExpress.
- soapdog 6y agoThat may be true but when dealing with book discovery nothing beats going to an actual book store and browsing. Human curated isles and shelves, people to talk to, an environment that fosters curiosity. That can't be replaced with clever algorithms designed to push whatever amazon want to push. I agree with you that buying on Amazon is easy and frictionless but convenience comes with at a cost and sometimes price is not money. If you already know the book you want, it is dead easy to buy on Amazon. But, it is also easy to buy elsewhere online. Amazon is a bully and its business practices harm authors and publishers. It also treats their workers poorly. Is this the company you want to fund?
- techfoolery 6y agoI don't want to be that guy and say to effect, "well, welcome to the real world". There are trade-offs involved for every side, good and bad. Your book discovery process may be optimal for you, but I couldn't be further away from that. I don't really care to know Bob or Sally's taste at the local bookstore, don't know them, have 0 trust in them. (There's probably exceptions, insignificant ones though, in big cities like Austin with really cool book stores & a niche collector-kinda collection, but that's a different market to me) Why would I care about human curated isles and shelves when I could go look up what Tyler Cowen's reading and recommending, or Marc Andreessen or Patrick Collison? Not to mention, Twitter's fantastic for this. There's very interesting people that post snippets as well of what they're reading, and build up a credibility that gives you insight into the book as well as knowing this person has a reading taste that aligns with your own. And then once I evaluate the options, I can easily go on Amazon and get whatever I want to read in a timely manner (Not to mention using Amazon's reviews as an additional filter, the 2/3 star reviews for more critical analysis)
- asdff 6y agoOne benefit for me is that it's faster and easier to walk into my neighborhood bookstore and walk out with a good book that maybe I've already read a couple exerpts from right in the store (not some brief preview online), than doing my own legwork on book discovery and waiting for a shipment. I love my local bookstore, the people working there have great taste since they are literally professionals at this.
- nly 6y agoThey do have a website. I would assume the problem is that nobody can compete with Amazons delivery network (and Prime) on price.
- signal11 6y agoMore than that, we also have the problem that many users look online on Amazon first. For example, for online searches (in the UK), I try Amazon, Wordery, and Waterstones.com -- but usually Amazon first. If they don't have something or for some reason I feel I need to look elsewhere, I try the others. Interestingly, for old or hard-to-find books, many people in the UK use BookDepository.com and AbeBooks -- guess what, both are owned by Amazon. (I try to make up by visiting my local Waterstones regularly and more niche bookshops like Daunt when I can, but of course during the pandemic that's gone out of the window).
- 72deluxe 6y agoNo way, I didn't know Abebooks was owned by Amazon. I always found it far easier to use than Amazon's own site for finding books.
- jfk13 6y agoYeah, they were bought in around 2008. My enthusiasm for Abebooks has declined markedly since then. I still find the site better than Amazon's for a lot of things I'm interested in, but prefer to avoid both as much as possible.
- amateurdev 6y agoAbebooks is my primary source of buying books! Its especially good for me, since I'm not originally from the US and its the cheapest way to get publications in my native language from "foreign" sellers. I'd like to support booksellers in my country, but I go back only once or twice a year and can't make all purchases then. On the other hand, I've found sellers that are shipping from within my city or around (happened thrice in 4ish years of buying). In that case, I'll just track them down and try to contact them for a direct purchase cutting out the middleman. Its a lot of work sometimes, but in my mind worth it.
- CalRobert 6y agoFortunately, Powells is great for this. Whenever I need a book delivered in the US they deliver. "In many parts of the world overgrown local busybodies have destroyed "high streets" in attempts to monetize drivers and pad their CV; driving people away. " Not sure what you're getting at here but if you think you deserve free private car storage on public land you might try reading The High Cost of Free Parking by Donald Shoup.
- easytiger 6y agoLet me guess. All cars are evil and the nation has adopted them simply to anger cyclist folk? Embarrassingly reductive giberish. Not everyone has a living situation to live as you'd wish them
- d4rti 6y agoIt's very clear you have not read the book. I highly recommend it. It is largely about the problems of parking policy and I do not recall much if any content about cycling.
- Eezee 6y agoYou guessed what the content is from the title alone and then judged the book by your made-up content instead of actually finding out what the book might be about. Now that is embarrassingly reductive gibberish.
- easytiger 6y agoI was inferring the opinion of the previous commenter. No consideration given to his comment on some book.
- sgt 6y agoI think next day is overrated. If something is important enough for you, surely most people should be willing to wait a few days e.g a week for it to arrive. It's not like you are going to finish that book the same day (usually).
- easytiger 6y agoThat's not how human brain reward systems work though
- kube-system 6y agoMany people use books for tasks other than pleasure.
- sgt 6y agoThen you buy the e-book :-)
- c22 6y agoPersonally I want to be able to travel somewhere nearby on a whim, hold a product in my hands, sometimes physically compare it to a competing product, then travel home with it on that very same day.
- easytiger 6y agoAnd you represent all consumers?
- easynowwww 6y agoDo you?
- c22 6y agoI think I was pretty clear about who I was representing.
- growlist 6y ago> overgrown local busybodies Unfortunately these types always seem to be the ones at the very top also.
- mdoms 6y agoSpeak for yourself. That's not the world I want to live in.
- atoav 6y ago*have it arrive the next day, realize they sold you a misprint as new, go and return the book, write an angry return text. Get the promise they will send you a new one, get another misprint, write an angry review Seriously, Amazon really was good once. Now I'd rather order a book from any competitor that cares about their customers. Much less hassle.
- Joker_vD 6y agoWhere does Amazon even get those misprints anyhow? Or how do they manage to mix "used, for re-sale" with "in a big cardboard box full of the copies of this book straight from the publisher, for first sale" in the first place?
- Kednicma 6y agoI've got news for you: You aren't in Powell's target market. Powell's is for Portlanders, and on any other year of their existence they would be swarmed daily, busier than any food cart. In this part of the world, Powell's is not an online store, but a physical institution.
- sergioro 6y ago> people want to order on a whim and have it arrive at their home the next day Some people don't mind giving up convenience (price, shipping time) to help their local bookstores. From the article: "The vitality of our neighbors and neighborhoods depends on the ability of local businesses to thrive. We will not participate in undermining that vitality."
- qubex 6y agoWhen I visited the PNC in 2015 I peregrinated all the way from Seattle (WA) to Portland (OR) simply for the joy of visiting Powell’s. I even chose my hotel to be as close as possible (which turned out to be the very hip ACE Hotel, which was another amazing experience). These places may be retail businesses, but they’re also basically priceless experiences that should be viewed as public goods.
- CalRobert 6y agoUnfortunately we haven't found a great way to price externalities correctly - whether the positive externalities of a local bookshop, or the negative externalities of online commerce. Of course, there are negative externalities to local stores (people demand the right to drive there, for some odd reason, though Portland does better here than most), and positive externalities to online shopping (more efficient distribution, etc.) but regardless we do a terrible job at pricing them.
- qubex 6y agoI live in Milan so the whole shopping-experience thing is still very much a part of my daily life. I realise that it’s different in the world of malls and big-box stores.
- icebraining 6y agoThe Lello bookstore in Porto, Portugal has a lot of visitors just for sightseeing (if you search for photos you'll get why), so they started to charge €3 (~$3.6) for the entrance, refundable if you purchased a book. Still, seems like Powell's experience is all about the books themselves, so that value should be well captured in increased sales.
- CalRobert 6y agoI have never managed to visit Powells without buying a book, which helps!
- onecommentman 6y ago
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- 29athrowaway 6y agoMany people go to physical stores, look for a product they like, then search it on Amazon.
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- signal11 6y agoYes, it's called "showrooming" and retailers hate it, not that there's much they can do to stop it. However, for bookshops, I personally believe there's value in having a well-curated collection of books available locally, so I tend to allocate a portion of my book-buying money to physical stores. An added bonus: Browsing for me is an excellent alternative to recommendation algorithms, and lets me pick up books that I otherwise wouldn't.
- philliphaydon 6y agoI was looking at kids books yesterday and found a set of 'feelings' books, but it was $108... Checked on lazada.sg and it was $32... They may hate it, but $70 difference is too much. If it was like $50 I would have just bought the set while at the store...
- monadic2 6y agoI've found a 30% upcharge is what to expect here in the US. Depending on shipping you may even save money.
- mschuster91 6y agoThis is why a lot of countries have a "fixed book price" system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_book_price
- kube-system 6y ago...so that the price would be $108 everywhere?
- altmind 6y agoWhat's the best alternative to buy physical books for both customer and publisher?
- dubcanada 6y agoAny other source? The real reason for this is, Powell has it's own book store that competes with Amazon.
- francisofascii 6y agoWe are fortunate to still have a Barnes and Noble nearby. Hope it stays open.
- coldpie 6y agoOften you can buy direct from the author or publisher. If your goal is to avoid Amazon (although I admit I don't know how this will affect revenues to the author/publisher), you can get in touch with your local bookstores or places like https://www.indiebound.org/ https://www.indiebound.org/
- ArkVark 6y agoThe problem is not Amazon, the problem is local rents. If we encourage mixed-use zoning, ie. 3-5 storey apartment blocks with the ground and first level for commercial and office use, we'll lower rents and reduce commutes.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoThat's true. But I'd say the problem is us. We want the perks of local business, but too often they're an afterthought. Or we simply choose convenience. Saving a couple dollars on Amazon is no savings at all, if we eventually lose things we love (e.g., local bookstore). But try selling that to someone who is has a religiosly deep relationship with their Prime membership and is convinced they're too busy to fit the local ____ store in. The Hustle Culture mentality has real side effects. That said, as someone who did (i.e., owner) B&M retail for 10 years, local business need to be more available. Closing at 6.00 pm every day limits your audience. Being open later one or two evenings is a game changer. _If_ you are focused on your customers and their needs. Or, if your store is in a small town and you drive to your shop, don't take up prime parking spots. Yes, I've seen this done. "Business is slow." Gee, I wonder why. Don't get me wrong. I'm not an Amazon supporter. They are my vendor or last choice. That said, it's sad how often I get to that last choice so quickly (e.g., Powell's website is marginal at best).
- kiba 6y agoLocal businesses would stay open if they don't have to pay absurd rents, or that vacant storefronts are actually available for rent.
- chiefalchemist 6y agoSo they close early to do less business? And that pays the rent?? So instead of being able to catch people coming home from work, the local biz ignores those people? So those people can go home and buy from Amazon?
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- wrp 6y agoPowell's Technical Books used to be my favorite place to hang out. I would ride downtown in the morning and spend an entire day there, scanning every shelf in my fields of interest, reveling in periodic hits of serendipity. Since PTB closed, I've been back once. It wasn't worth it any more. I'll admit that I did like it better back before the store was spruced up to be like a Borders.
- zxwx 6y agoHow is it like Borders? It's a warren of different rooms on different floors, half of which are more like a warehouse than a retail store, with a huge selection of used and new books shelved together. I loved the separate technical books stores, too, although they still have a great tech section in the main location. I assume the standalone PTBs shrank then closed because people were browsing more than buying.
- paulcole 6y ago> I assume the standalone PTBs shrank then closed because people were browsing more than buying Should’ve charged a modest fee for the periodic hits of serendipity.
- trynewideas 6y agoConsidering the rent changes around there over the last 5 years, it'd be less "modest" and more "how much ya got"
- viburnum 6y agoI loved the technical book store too but it was always too good to be true. It was fun while it lasted.
- nabilhat 6y agoI'm still mourning the loss of PTB. Not just a bookstore, more a collection of hundreds of subjects in excruciating detail, rabbit holes that would take years to follow of programming, electronics, physics, machinining, steam power. I hate to think what happened to it all. It really did feel like a reservoir of discarded knowledge, like a massive grimoire of nerding.
- atoav 6y agoOf the last 10 books I bought on Amazon 4 were faulty prints with miscut pages, misaligned pages, misprint pages. Two of them had misprint covers. All of them were sold as new by Amazon itself. I am done with buying books from them
- Mediterraneo10 6y agoTo be fair, this might not be Amazon's fault, it could have happened with any online booksellers, because ultimately the publisher is at fault. For example, Oxford University Press used to be renowned for the quality of its printing and binding, but it has quietly moved many titles to very shoddy digital printing with misaligned pages and a glued binding that fails instantly, and online you just can't be sure whether you'll get a quality book from an earlier print run, or the new crap. Even the ISBN might be the same.
- kps 6y agoAmazon has been known to ship counterfeit books.
- atoav 6y agoWeird however that it happens so often with Amazon (with books from different publishers) while it never happened to me when using more local online booksellers, where I was essentially buying the same kind of books. I noticed the same thing with other stuff from Amazon. E.g. 3 of the Amazon basic HDMI cables I ordered didn't work. Ordered similarly priced ones at a local retailer and they worked like a charm - all of them. I am not the only person who noticed that Amazon's quality has dropped in recent years. Edit: one thing I forgot to mention: one of the faulty books was also clearly used, there was even a coffee (?) stain inside. This is not something that happens because the publisher has bad quality control.
- viburnum 6y agoSome OUP books look like they were printed on a laser printer from 1988 now. I think they’re doing print-on-demand for some titles. You expect better for a $40 paperback.
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- cafard 6y agoI find that on March 26, I ordered a couple of books from Powell's. Powell's expected the delivery to be April 14, and as I recall it arrived a day or two earlier. And two and a half weeks was fine. I wasn't out of reading matter, and I knew that one of the books would take a couple of weeks to read. What hurry was there?
- sybercecurity 6y agoOn a side note, Amazon really only delivered the coup de grace to independent bookstores. Large chains like Borders, Barnes and Nobles and box stores like Target and Walmart weakened them so much they couldn't compete when Amazon took away their sole advantage: ordering hard-to-find books from small publishers. Had a parent that worked in an independent bookstore. The store couldn't match box stores in price. They had selection and the willingness to order obscure books for people, but once the Internet came to homes, they weren't the only ones that did that. Eventually that bookstore got bought out by Borders. Ironically that store was one of the first customers of the distribution network Borders set up for their stores.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- ghaff 6y agoAnd even before the chains, there was a big independent bookstore near me that had the remarkable innovation of selling books at less than list price--which was probably the first real shot at the small independents in the area. They eventually shrank and then went out of business, during the Borders/B&N era I believe.
- imglorp 6y agoNever been to Powell's but I just ordered a book to support their stand. Good PR or not, it makes sense.
- mfer 6y agohttps://bookshop.org/ https://bookshop.org/ is now an option to use instead of Amazon. It also raises money for local bookstores.
- greenie_beans 6y agoI'm conflicted over this business. It's ran by good people but I don't think it's the right solution for independents to compete with Amazon. Just go straight to the local bookstore's website. A lot of the stores on bookshop also have an online store. Bookshop is a supplement and basically just plugged straight into Ingram (the distributor), so they're able to sell whatever your local indie's web store lacks.
- isaiahg 6y agoYou have way more trust in people than I do. I don't think people would do anything if it meant just 0.1 more seconds of inconvenience.
- mfer 6y agoWhere I live there is no bookstore with their web store within a close distance (it's greater than 30 minute drive). So, it's not an option. One bookstores within 30 minutes all have very limited selection essentially tied to those who live at the edge of suburbia and rural. So, if I'm going to order online I'm happy to do it in a way that supports small bookstores. I imagine there are others like me.
- NewOrderNow 6y agoThere needs to be some sort of shopify solution for Libary stacks and small bookstores
- greenie_beans 6y agothe bookshop.org site that the parent comment mentioned is an attempt at that solution
- AlexandrB 6y agoI'm going to take this opportunity to grind my personal axe: Amazon is extremely lazy about shipping books, throwing them into lightly-padded envelopes. Books shipped from Amazon usually arrive with at least minor cosmetic damage and sometimes much worse. For me this is reason enough to avoid buying books on Amazon.
- duxup 6y agoI've had a run of damage to books, but from what looks like printing ... for what I suspect are actually fakes. The binding is a bit off, or pages just didn't print right / are malformed, or strange sort of "weathering" like effects over time, and etc.
- jurassic 6y agoI've definitely received counterfeit books from Amazon. I bought two volumes in a set of George Orwell essays and the difference in quality between the genuine one and the fake one was absurd. The real volume was a high quality trade paperback and the fake was a low-quality scan of the book printed on extremely cheap paper, binding stiff and hard to open. I emailed the publisher to let them know it was happening and never heard back.
- FoomFries 6y agoI recently ordered an illustrated novel with a rather heavy paperweight - Amazon shipped it in weakly padded envelopes and the corners were banged up. I even bothered to contact their customer service to ship it with better packaging, to no avail on the replacement item. I then ordered 10 of the damn things, to see what the packaging would do. 4 came in one box, 3 came in another, and 3 came in individual poorly padded envelopes. The ones in boxes had insufficiently inflated plastic bags, and only 2 books out the entire 12 ordered (original, replacement, and the 10) were what Amazon defines as 'New' upon arrival, though all were shipped as 'New'. Definitely a frustrating experience. Edit: I returned all but the one showing the least damage, and received a full refund after some time.
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- _Nat_ 6y agoIt's always weird to read a story where someone's rooting for something like old bookstores to remain in-business. The thing's that I don't mind the economic shift nor the format shift. I don't particularly care for bookstores or even old-fashion books; I think electronic media with active content is vastly superior. I look forward to further advances in technology, where the line between static media and computation continues to blur into something far more beautiful. I appreciate that a shifting economy can be tough on those in sectors that're drying up. I can sympathize with bookstore owners who feel saddened by having to close up shop. But it feels a little weird to see folks taking a rent-seeking position, arguing that broken windows ought be allowed to keep breaking.
- AlexandrB 6y agoIt seems weird to label consumer preferences (liking paper books) that don't align with yours as advocating for rent-seeking. Arguably, selling digital media is the ultimate form rent-seeking, since the marginal cost is nearly zero and you're often paying for "access" to content. At least with paper books you get a physical product (and resale rights) with your purchase.
- _Nat_ 6y agoI suspect that you misread my post as this seems unrelated to what I was saying. The rent-seeking issue was related to folks worrying about the loss of local jobs due to bookstores closing down. My personal preference for digital media's unrelated to that point.
- Jimmc414 6y agoSometimes you are buying more than just a book and human expertise still has a value. I'll give you an example, I was very pleased to see a local music store flourishing mid pandemic, as I feared they might go under. I purchased an instrument knowingly at a considerable markup because they had a ton of knowledge I needed and I was able to ask many questions. I know that if I decided to go in and ask all of those same questions but then instead of buying it at Art's Music, I decide to find the lowest bidder online, it is only a matter of time before Art and his expertise disappear from the market. I'm afraid there aren't enough people supporting Art to keep human expertise relevant these days. Amazon may provide a very good service now but once all competition is gone what incentive is there to provide the same level of service?
- Jimmc414 6y agoI support Powell's courage and I am rooting for them, but I'm afraid they have waited too long to make a stand and the only limit to Amazon's power to squash them in the marketplace is Amazon's concern about being perceived as too powerful.
- bredren 6y agoMe too, been going there a long time. Though it has had its own share of public labor disputes with employees over the years. That said, the local support really is quite good and as far as I know the company hasn’t been in real dire straights. >The pandemic changed the landscape, Powell said...its Amazon sales slowed so she decided to focus on the bookstore’s own website. I like Powell’s but the site wasn’t really very good. It was like so many other companies that have somehow been caught flat footed when they should have been hiring and building excellent online experiences _around_ their core value offering years ago. This is with acknowledgment that the company built out an entire area to do online sales years back. Powell’s could have or still can build its own GoodReads or similar engagement tool but they haven’t and probably won’t. So long as the company is competing like an online bookstore I don’t think it will ever compete with Amazon in potential sales.
- pschastain 6y agoKudos to Powell's, I've spent literally thousands of dollars over the years at that magnificent store and will continue to do so; spent hour upon hour there in my childhood getting lost in wonders it holds. They don't try to undercut smaller bookstores by offering discounts on new books like B&N, Amazon, etc., their employees seem to actually enjoy working there, it's a family-friendly environment and the selection simply can't be beat. If you enjoy reading, please support this business.
- hinkley 6y agoSomeone convinced me to switch to Libro.fm for audio books, which gives a dividend to a bookstore of your choice, and Powell’s is of course on the list of options. ‘Course I haven’t been commuting or taking road trips so I haven’t been listening as much lately.
- samcheng 6y agoI've never lived in Portland, but try to visit annually; Powell's has earned its place as a 'must go' destination every year. I mean, it's a bookstore, with active curation, that spans a city block. Amazing! I end up with the book I had in mind, plus half a dozen books discovered along the way...
- erickhill 6y agoTotally agree. I live in Seattle and my family and I pre-COVID would visit Portland at least once a year, sometimes twice. Powell's was always a destination every single time, even if only for an hour with many books in hand I'd simply never have found or thought to look for online.
- runevault 6y agoI've yet to go to Portland, but if I ever do I intend to make a stop at Powell's assuming the world is in a place where that can happen. Thankfully we have our own good indie bookstore where I live that's a stand in until I can make it there.
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- pklausler 6y agoIf you love Powell's, love their employees too, and do your on-line ordering via their union's portal (https://ilwulocal5.com/Support/ https://ilwulocal5.com/Support/).
- lowbloodsugar 6y agoLocal farm says will not sell grain in cities any more; Says agricultural "revolution" has resulted in decline of people working on farms from 83% to 8%; Working themselves, day in, day out, tilling the land by hand, and all the good honest work that pre-agricultural revolution farming required. Some people cite that the agricultural revolution paved the way for cities, the industrial revolution, science and technology, but what is really important is jobs that involve turning the land by hand. The facts that food is now far more available, far cheaper, and far easier to obtain (it can be delivered to your door) and at far greater variety, don't offset the fact that if we returned to pre-agricultural revolution pratices we could have 250 million americans all employed working dawn till dusk on the fields, with only the occasional famine. (In other news, Farm admits that its only doing this because "The pandemic changed the landscape, Powell said, with Amazon prioritizing cleaning supplies and other essential goods -- slowing the shipment of books.")
- maxioatic 6y agoI love Powell's. I've spent way too many hours in both of their Portland locations (and the old Technical store, RIP) over the last 20+ years. I've lived within walking and biking distance to both the whole time. That said, these days I buy a majority of my books from Amazon, and have for a while. The simple reason is that for the books I buy most, which are technical in nature, the prices on Amazon are so much better. For example, on Wednesday, I bought (from Amazon): - Programming TypeScript - Effective TypeScript - JavaScript: The Definitive Guide - Eloquent JavaScript (I'm learning TypeScript/JavaScript for work...) In order, the prices on Amazon vs Powell's: - $27, $50 - $27, $40 - $52, $70 - $25, $40 totals: $131, $200 I can't justify spending that much more at Powell's, sorry not sorry. If the prices were similar, as in 10%-25%, I would for sure buy them from Powell's, but they rarely are. Now - what I do buy at Powell's is every other type of book! I'll never buy a regular old paperback off Amazon, or a cookbook, or a travel book, or ... It's the categories of books that I don't spend a lot on, for which I will gladly pay an increased price. I feel this is definitely justified by the experience I get perusing the stores, finding books I never knew I wanted. (Sometimes the books at Powell's aren't more expensive or actually cheaper, especially the used ones).
- rfreiberger 6y agoI used to think this way, going with the cheapest method possible but I now try to buy directly from the publisher or local stores. Not only does it hurt the publisher buying from Amazon, it also diverts the funds to produce the next book. Some of my books have been extremely expensive but these are pennies to the value I find in them and how it improves my career.
- greenie_beans 6y ago^^^ can't emphasize this enough. please don't buy from amazon if you have the means to afford the list price for a book. amazon isn't good for the ecosystem of books for a lot of reasons, but in this instance amazon makes publishers lose money. unfortunately publishers have no choice but to sell on amazon. you gotta vote with your dollars here to help sustain quality publishing.
- wdr1 6y agoIf you've only visited the first Powell's on the south side of Chicago (Hyde Park), you'll be blown by the Portland location. It truly is a book lovers paradise.
- eindiran 6y agoI have been to the Portland location, and as amazing as it is the Hyde Park Powell's will always hold a special place in my heart. I spent many a day in college wasting time in the shelves of Powell's and spent a lot more money there than I should have. My interest in graphic novels was started by a book (Dash Shaw's Bodyworld) I stumbled onto there, my interest in poetry the same (Stanely Kunitz' Passing Through). Perhaps most significantly, I discovered a book on cellular automata there that really kicked off my interest in computer science.
- davidw 6y agoOnce things are better... if you like books, you have to visit Powell's at some point in your life. I used to work a few blocks away and would often spend my lunch break there. The trick was to look at books before eating, so I'd get hungry enough to remember to leave.
- vmception 6y ago> declaring that the online retail giant undermines communities by siphoning business from the real world and replacing it with internet commerce. Alternate Title: Powell won't sell any books at all anymore
- eindiran 6y agoThe truly enormous lines that constantly plague the Portland location would indicate otherwise.
- tly_alex 6y agoIt's surprsing that in 2020 that a bookstore would like to walk away from where most customers would go and buy their product. I hope they find it would be able to serve their customer better with their own online bookstore and less cost to run their own infrastructure.
- throwawaysea 6y agoWhile I recognize the convenience and price savings of shopping online at Amazon, the reality is that once charming bookstores disappear, people won’t even know what they’re missing to be able to ascribe a value to it. It’s about wanting a world that has a distributed power scheme (healthily decentralized), a marketplace of ideas (rather than only what Amazon platforms/sells), value placed on knowledge (books), spaces for subcultures to thrive, spaces for people in communities to interact with each other, etc. Bookshops are just one example of what we are losing to megacorps for whom anti trust action is long overdue.