How to Resist Amazon and Why, Part 1 - Encore; Unknown

how much of your holiday shopping will be online i'm kate mcintyre and today on k pr presents apply to shop local november twenty seven in small business saturday seems like a good time to re visit my conversation with dna came he's the owner of the raven bookstore in downtown lawrence and the author of how to resist amazon and why today's kbr present originally aired on march twenty first twenty twenty one danny thanks for joining us today and so to have to be their focus closer the raven bookstore is an underwriter and kansas public radio and on a personal note i buy a lot of books at his store before your book and he'd tell us a little bit about yourself and how you went from being a writer to the owner of a little bookstore yeah i moved to lawrence in two thousand fourteen to start an mfa in poetry at the university of kansas and before that i was i was in cleveland ohio

i was a teacher and then a grad student there has over a couple years ago a master's in english and kind of fell in love re fell in love really with writing and decided to pursue an nsa and the recent kansas is kind enough to invite me to study there i am and it is seen as i got really even before you moved here it fell in love with downtown in the small businesses in the raven and i remember we came out every week insurgents out for apartments and spent a lot of a great time downtown mastery poking in and out of course the raven was the standout favorite of all the places we visited on and you soon as i moved here i began the long campaign to get a job here i am it's a it's a small crew and with it the previous owner of the ravens we didn't really wonderful worked as a steward of the store i was quite selective about who she hired so it took a long time a commensurate entire me but after some months i came on as a part time bookseller ends totally fellow of the book

business and the store and wipe it and that scene were doing here and i wanted to be a part of it as much as i could i'm and so as a as i finished the nsa are more and more involved with the raven in heidi stereotype about retiring and i had told her i was like if you're thinking about moving out i would like to be the first person to talk to our vip to possibly take over and that's exactly what happened and we're so glad that you did well thank you need to i'm so glad that you brought up the subject of the history of the raven bookstore their crime selling environment and some of the issues where the amazon are not the ravens first encounter with her difficult selling environment little bit how about how the raven books are keen to be a and m and a great controversy of the neighborhood back was it ten years ago of one that was twenty so set it what it really from the ghetto from hidden

this from the time when the reagan was just an idea and it's requiring that a bit of salt and a bit of defiance to you to do it back at mary lou rye were two college friends he decided to set a mystery bookstore in downtown lawrence and they absolutely could i didn't even fire before and every time they went to apply for a long they were told that that book selling in reading was a hobby and that a viable investment and so they have to do it without any i'm annie was any financing this gotten together and wanted a second mortgage may be a script of some funding from their friends made an analogy and so that's i mean there's a streak of defiance and ended and from the earliest moments of the ravens and then ten years and that was in nineteen eighty seven to nineteen ninety seven of borders books and music superstar open directly across the street from us can turn a corner and they add new cancer and seventh so that was a big deal for

for decades there have been attempts to bring in big investment or big corporations into downtown lawrence and there have been of attempts to fend them off and in that particular town for a borders opened on here the raven was a leading voice in resisting that in preaching the importance of lawrence downtown lawrence being a small business destination and that of all or a place where big corporations could do business and so pat was in it as he was writing letters in and doing interviews in the press in and talking about what would happen to a place like the raven if borders did open up and not to mention the historical presentation of the building that was on that one so borders eventually won out and it did open up they they can a path toward preserve some of the old building but ended up opening a superstar right there and watch it a hundred feet from the front door of a raven there was a big giant corporate compensation so part of the raven more is that the first saturday the borders open that was our busiest day ever and which is a point of

pride in a story we still tell but ultimately their first year of sales slid fifteen percent i am so it was hard to do business across the street it didn't get the raven was interesting closing and two thousand seven before it came on and purchased the store so it's been arrested road it's not always easy to be a small business in terms of corporate a big corporate competition on of course borders is a chain went on earth in two thousand eleven that by the time the threat of borders went away the set of amazon was was right there waiting and in fact is one of the reasons why borders was forced to go on tour is because of competition from amazon i'm having with danny came he's the author of how to resist an islamic and why he's also the owner of the ravens bookstore in downtown lawrence before we go on i should probably mention danny is joining us from the raven bookstore so you might be hearing some bookstore noise in the background right now i should also

mention i am doing this interview from my home studio which is our guest room closet and there is some building construction going on in our building today as if you're hearing drilling sound in the background and that's on my hand welcome really is not exactly an eu already brought up the whole amazon is too hard what was your first sense that amazon was going to be a big threat not just to little bookstores like the raven by it too the big borders down the street it's a good question i think i was i have been aware for a long time that it's it's a dangerous company and a dangerous business model and it it exists i am at odds with the small businesses and small bookstores that i love and for a long time i ate ignore that and i think a lot of people do verizon makes it very easy to ignore that's much easier to purchase something on amazon and it is to think about

the research there's very dangerous labor record in and we'll record an elegant his style because it's just the one quaking in their eyes a nice day so i'm not certain when exactly i can better wake up moment i think part of it was my eighth grade school i am immersion in the book industry in the earlier parts of my career fire six years ago i mean the book industry has been talking about this for a long time but when i came into the book industry all these conversations i have by amazon we're but so the bookseller was very dated conferences are going to janine education classes or even just in text messages are really good at talking about our current amazon makes business force amended the talking points are there and how we talk to each other by i'm it was not a conversation that was happening with indigent booksellers and their customers which

is something i have since then taken on as a purpose too and therefore how to resists amazon and why it was a book it was the scene before with asean it was tweets on twitter and before that conversation with other booksellers why did you decide it's time to write this down and get that message out there too a wider audience well part of it was is what they want to preach to the choir was getting anywhere if it like booksellers are already avid that bookseller very good at war ii on the same team and and it's it's a much bigger issue this is again in the salts by a bookseller's talking to each other and honestly it's not an assault by individual consumer choices when it what's really needed is a change this shifts in the court of public opinion that will put pressure on legislators another people in charge to stop letting companies like this get away with that and so i think the public can of

public information campaign is really important so people are aware in part sir are we looking to encourage investment and small businesses in a way from amazon yet that's great that's in that when i am but it's also to create pressure on the elected officials who look very much decide why companies like amazon to do away with it i've had it with danny came he's the author of how to resist amazon and why he is also the owner of the ravens bookstore in downtown lawrence did meet the stagehands you tie monopoly laws on the books what made seem to apply to amazon gets it's a great question and i think this movie say it's not even an issue of of passing new laws it's an issue of enforced vigorously enforced military have died since the nineteen seventies antitrust enforcement as revolver was entirely around prices so the way to measure whether a company deserves antitrust scrutiny is consumer

welfare and there is just some influential system thinking in the nineteen seventies that decided the main way of deciding consumer welfare is lowering prices which basically means if a company lowers prices for consumers they can get away with whatever they want they can be as big as they want they can actually wire and they can see their workers only won because ultimately they're lowering prices and that's in their good for consumers i would argue a lot of other concurrent antitrust experts would argue that that's ignoring a lot of the hidden costs of companies like this on how dangerous are the jobs that are creating goods that lower his prices on what his competition being stifled how easy is it to start a small business or to define it in a world dominated by these companies that are lower and prices and all of that is kind of ignored if you're only looking at a consumer pricing so and it's like if people are making less money i'm like it's it's another late searle cable prices are a good thing but what if anything are making less money and their jobs because of the jobs and creating

his loafers good ideas go don't pay as well and so it's there is a whole slate of this is that as soon as a consumer while services the nineteen seventies the only way people in the misery of dealing with regulators and the measuring it is through frozen record as a cliff notes you hear a lot of the same arguments made about wal mart and how that's driven out a lot of local businesses how it is amazon and their business model different than say at a walmart to blowers their prices an end ultimately hurts local businesses yeah well i mean the saab local movement was kind of born in opposition to wal mart and i think a lot of those issues are still at play the differences amazon is that it's much better so amazon is is walmart plus a ton of other things amazon is walmart plus it provides amazon web services which is the backbone for most of the amazon is walmart plus ringing doorbells which have these videos share intelligence and police

departments the result of civil liberties questions amazon as wal mart plus amazon marketplace which is the largest and basically the only online marketplace for small businesses and so amazon and all the issues that are at play with wal mart are there isn't amazon has so much else going on in a limited scale in power so immense to the point that wal mart is now trying to catch up to amazon and try to copy things like amazon marketplace and all these other things that amazon does so it's it's the same issues that much much bigger or did he and i've had this conversation before i know local book club and i'm constantly encouraging all of my fellow book club members to stop local buy their books of the raven bookstore and i hear it time and time again and i know you hear it time and time again that i can get this cheaper on amazon talk to me about the price of a book and what all is reflected in that yeah so right after that that people always ask me about the

books be more expensive it at the bookstores and then similarly that's true i am but i'll just right after that we're charging the price of the book books unlike most consumer goods come with a prize printed on the package so the publisher decides how much that will cost in the charred exactly what they say amazon is what has taken a book prices and they're doing so in a way that i think long term it's working to the devalued the book by with a capital b and i think that's a risk but that's that's that's not a question you're asking of the moment but i'm with her one way we can get around this and have this conversation with customers is certain to emphasize was an independent bookstores doing for a community that amazon while and so in that couple extra box that you ended spending of any bookstore you are i'm your view basically paying for those efforts in the community of independent bookstores doing like part of local non profits are free programming like donating the local charities like supporting

things like waiting for a dynamic their amazing free pantry of birds i like donating this is evidence of local silent auctions and so the it's an incredible so as baz says the deeply involved in the work of building and sustaining its community and it's important to invest in that i am so if you're paying more and in the bookstore you're getting that along with the book where is amazon every dollar you spend on amazon very little ends up in a community where you are i would be remiss at this point if i didn't also mentioned that the ravens supports organizations like kansas public radio and part of what you're paying for when you buy your books locally is your support of organizations like a pr it's a great point you know i was thinking about this the i am a mention the labor diner but i've been thinking about this this tent talking point about how much a dollar stays in lawrence i am and i think the labor diner book is a great

example so we've already established that very little of many dollars that on amazon says the more that i think almost all of the values that i'm elated and i have both stays aden and lawrence because that book is the majority of the prizes for that book go to providing free meals for for people who need them during a pandemic which they've been doing thousands of meals per month the entire year and so that's her muslim it goes but the rest of the money goes either to people who are preparing an and dishing out those meals are towards the production of the book and the production of the book also have been a more is because it was printed by the aristocrats of kansas so that's an investment that's almost a hundred percent return on investment when you're buying a waiver dialogue from us or from the labor diner and all that money at stake here and that that's simply it's the exact opposite of what you're doing when you buy on amazon i think that's it's an opportune time to mention that lady bird

collected by medicare for it is our choice for our very first take your presents book club thank you danny for bringing that will be visiting with medicare heard by zuma on march thirty first you can find out more information about that on our keep your prisons book love facebook page or on kansas public radio's website kansas public radio dot org thanks danny yeah it's ok good they like another book like your book for example there's a price on the back of it taught me about how much of those dollars go where because i think a lot of people think like ok your book sells for say twelve dollars that you probably get like oh i don't know ten dollars of that right now in fact that are okay so they'd breaking down the cost of the book when he when you so when you buy a book and you need an independent bookstore just under half of their money is staying with the bookstore so little over half is going to the publisher and that's going to

paying the people who work at the publisher it's going to produce in the book is one of the folks who design the book on in about fifty percent and they're going to be off that roughly the pentagon how the deal is set up i am but roughly fifty percent of the books come dressed as the author from fifteen percent to fifty three or fifty four that sound i'm about forty percent is going to the poster then the rest you know roughly forty five percent of the sticker places going to the bookstore at the ravens about half of them are still goes into rages and it's it's important to provide jobs and good jobs and others do it is we can where people are fairly compensated and ten say that work and so it's really important for us on another wrestler goes to to rent it goes to stuff lake underwriting katie are it goes to all the costs of doing business and so you know and that's where a lot of

that stuff stays regular mortgages like that is here or more and everybody who works here was the lawrence all we as much as we can we buy things like office supplies and i'm sipping equipment from from kansas companies urban retailers in kansas and so i think that's in that and our share of that of that bodes prize which it does much of it right here as we can and that's really important because when you think again i keep coming back to this but when you spend money on amazon ads as verbs out here and amazon is not supporting kansas public radio nor am a providing gift certificates agencies no warrant public library is silent auction or things like that yet i'm getting danny came he's the author of how to resist amazon and why he's also the owner of the ravens bookstore in downtown lawrence any point that amazon can sell books at a loss because they have such a wide array of revenue streams so what books and all of that's a good

question and it's funny amazon's history with the book says is funny they started with books i wonder if some it is a little nostalgic it's also i mean they sell books because people are buying them from by jeff bezos did the book's early on because he's a fan of the book where he wanted to revolutionize the book business it had both for two reasons i am one very easy to sit their flats and they said he's really into bikes is impacting and wants and soothe there they're well organized every book as an isdn and so they're very easy it's easy to find information about books and because it's all standardized and so it was really easy for him to scale up and he was just looking for something where you could start selling something in them it is out of his drives and then i'm still of quickly and books can have offered him the quickest way to scale up because of how the book industry is cataloged in an organized and that's that's not the way a book lover thinks that you know that's a relentless that's the way are about

was a businessman things about it i mean instead the original name for amazon was relentless that time and to this day it inside relentless dot com into your web browser in the red suit says amazon that is so much more sinister sounding it is and so it says it doesn't so you how to think about everything they do i think the ethos is still there i am but that's still true of books and it there's still uses said they're still well tell our didn't organize an end and it's it's kind of the foundation of amazon's business but i don't think they make much money from boats of all time which for all the chaos are causing him in history it's it's a little better to me that it's not even once sustaining them anymore they are that must have been much much of their earnings much more there is comes from two places one is time amazon web services which i mentioned it's just a bag this the backbone for the server capacity of much of the internet i mean the reason why it's difficult it's a purely boycott

amazon because if you wanna do something like a facebook to want something on netflix you're using eighteen us service on its nearly impossible to use the internet without touching eight of us is a footprint and then the other is i'm seller fees from a third party marketplace and the fees that they charge and some people who sell on their platform and those can go up to thirty percent of average is thirty percent of every purchase made an amazon marketplace stays with amazon and if you go back to my calculations about what really makes we read about forty five percent of each book buyer stays here if you got thirty percent off her that you're leaving us with just fifteen percent to do everything from paying employees to pay rent and then you can see how it's so so hard to make money on amazon marketplace and handing over thirty percent rate of the bear danny have you jump back and talk a little bit more about the amazon web services i will freely admit you're talking to a technophobe whose

understanding of internet is extremely limited can you explain to me when you col amazon and the internet backbone what exactly do you mean by that voice is that of the air attack on then things that is internet technology require it's a sensor so this is basically eads said think of an analogy of the internet is it's at amazon web services is the roads and the bridges and the traffic lights in and near their servers their computers their network capacity that that companies paid for in order to host their services and so everything from something like netflix is using aid of us servers to giant defense contractors with the government so many companies that require some sort of network capacity or internet capacity fire are using amazon's equipment to make that happen and they have to pay amazon to do it is extremely lucrative it's much more lucrative than

retail goods for amazon i visited annie kayne he's the owner of their raven bookstore in downtown lawrence and author of how to resist amazon and why any irony brought up the fact that people walk in your bookstore all the time and say i can get this cheaper on amazon i know you'll also hear and you may have actually heard for me at some point in the past i've already seen this book available in paperback why can i only get it from you in hardcover it's a it's a good question that's a big frustration for for booksellers so the united states is a little funny was with how it releases books in the way it's a big windows here is a book will spend about a year and it's hard to resign before the cheaper paperback version comes out i am and and publicist yvette to make more money and one way that one reason they need to make more money is because amazon the biggest retailer of books is also the cheapest retailer of books which does this has less money and publishing to begin with but that's another question

so you've got hard covers they're more expensive than the only way to buy a book for a year in other countries and the united kingdom canada and he doesn't quite work like that off in a bitter battle come out much closer to the original publication date or even at the same time and i'll just released the hardcover and the director the same time or sometimes it only son paperback at all there are covered all i'm in so it's hard to see you did that stuff off of amazon prime and people will see it and think like oh the paper bag is available on amazon have not available of inevitable say they're trying to cheat me behind baskets were doing exactly why we promised the publishers would do were doing exactly what we've agreed to work were following the rules you're being punished because someone else's breaking the rules basically we don't have a cheaper version of his book because it doesn't exist and then the customers like what does exist is a site on amazon and like well that was a bootlegger was a caddie that someone was selling illegally

and we were we're very careful about what ends up on ourselves and i we won listen to learn everything in here is quality inn in good condition and that's that's that's not quite the case when when you're buying from amazon here bookstore like all bookstore as it has agreements with the publishing houses in terms of when you can really use bugs and in what kind of in whatever condition talking about why amazon doesn't always play by the same rules well it's the main example we're talking about is what's called an evocative title mean these are these are highly anticipated books or books that are going to sell a lot a book light of all the all the harry potter books have embargoes on them when they came out on this obama's becoming was an embargo but these are books were we're supposed to keep unlocking key until we open on on their publication date men and to sell those early we get in trouble we sign an agreement on these titles that

says we promise not to sell his early albums that if we break that agreement i'm all kinds of things that happen in it depends on how these are written but a really common punishment is we lose the privilege of doing other books on time so fleece el michelle obama's book early and it caught the next big release we won't get until four five days after its release it will miss out on those those big first and second day sales i'm it's happened it's ever thus before not not out of any malfeasance on our partners because of the stakes for getting the sign the agreement and we we got mostly because we forgot to send in the paperwork and so these things didn't force at the independent bookstore level and amazon technically i imagine sign these agreements as well when a book is embargoed it's important for everybody but there have been several cases where people get books from amazon early time and again that makes it seem like independent bookstore can do something and we were following the rules but a customer sees light of these people stayed because they can give

me the money that would book a couple days earlier and by amazon innovate they account for half of all book sales and seventy five percent of online sales and as i'm a publisher how hard and i didn't go after the company that accounts for half of my sails like there's i don't want a lead them too much because then they can say well in stock and so your books anymore but in any event as you try to punish us when to stop selling your books and amazon has played hardball before i'm every time there is a dispute over over e book rights for all kinds of things they're well documented examples of amazon fine karbala publishers to the point that they're devoting them to the second or third page of search results they're taking away prime sipping from his publishers products so you know a public search is more afraid of amazon they have an incredible service amazon has considerably more leverage to some the mere fact of what percentage of the us book market their path i

bet they would danny kane he's the author of how to resist amazon and why and the owner of the ravens bookstore in downtown lawrence ask you about a one particular book that is so perhaps only at the raven bookstore in downtown lawrence and your affection for a restaurant that you've never even been to tell us about some paradise can play the same as actually for this for lots of the region's history until recently the paris cafe and bakery cookbook was the ravens number one bestseller of all time and this is a great example of the kind of community building work that the raven haired amazon has an interest in their brain is very interested in this community building work so paris cafe again was a restaurant in downtown lawrence that was beloved people loved it and i guess because it was very close long before i moved

to radiate light it's enough of an impression on and that the people of this town the people still weighs in with a t shirts and can share memories of the place and then a couple years after they closed missing mccoy who is a really regular and one of the owners of the paris cafes self published a cookbook i'm an and sold it in a couple places she sold a ton of it on her own i think he was available to rent for a little while and it was available at the regime certainly ny on amazon or through traditional indigenous a book selling channels and i mean over the course of now a decade it came out in two thousand eleven we sold more than a thousand copies of his book which is big numbers for any book at any bookstore but people keep buying it every christmas week we go through twenty or thirty of them into going to reorder them i'm from for missing and that's where ali bookseller country that selfless and it's a number one selling book of all time by saying our number one selling book is their labor died aboard labor collective which has a similar story you know locally beloved restaurant owners were the only

books on the contours of that book too and so it's just a great example of a local bookstore championing something about the local community and they really focusing its efforts i know i'm celebrating the legacy of the story and then this is this restaurant that's closed and many of the people who were to never ate there i've always thought it was tremendous affection for it because the sellers but so much i love that story yeah it's that is even for us and there was a for independent bookseller they maybe and last year thirty years ago a small business saturday i don't know one of our day seven days to decide on salem missy and found a bastion of old geezer old stuffed sea surface of advertisement some have little coupons are like five dollars arthur nice meal and so they were just sitting in a basement and she was like you think you can sell his emptiness is i can't you know throw in his old age he served as a dodgy that we can sell them we saw the time so

we we we made a camel with a cookbook it was really fun i mean it's such a funny thing is i can only in lawrence moment when i'm on small business saturday we obviously and teasers from restaurants to close or ten years but again that's a canon it's is a little things i think is a really big can of economic and policy case to make against amazon but i think there is a really small i'm emotional kind of low stakes are limits to make four small business is well i'm a lot of this this issue a small businesses this is amazon his economic plan vincenzo hosts sue a lot of ways that robust small business seen ten and visibly are emotionally contributes to the character and called servicing it's important not sit beside a math that's why in the book i am every other chapters it's just a little interlude that serve a story of a small business life and his paris cafe story is one of those interludes it was

important meeting could that kind of storytelling amidst the the well researched kind of hard hitting policy arguments that that compose the bulk of the book and the thing with danny kane he's the author of how to resist amazon and why the fight for local economies data privacy fair labor independent bookstores and a people powered future we'll have more of our conversation with danny came coming up as keep your prisons continues right after this