Book Buying Two Ways

I get a lot of stick from people I know on social media (not all of them obvs) for using Amazon. I can explain until I am blue in the face the gaps in the local shopping landscape that Amazon plugs, how difficult some things are to source when you live on an island, how depressing it is to be faced with an almost total lack of choice for some sorts of merchandise, yet still I am held to account for generally selling out to the Evil Empire and helping Jeff Bezos take over the world. 

And I know that Amazon is not a leading light in the field of workers rights and I deplore that as much as the next person, but there are very few high street retailers, of the sort I am apparently helping to put out of business, even though  they do not, and never would have, a branch here (thereby creating my problem) and from whom I therefore could not buy even if I wanted to, who would stand up to much scrutiny in the field of human/workers rights.  Which is why we have tragedies like the Bangladesh garment factory fire in 2012. 

I'm not looking for an argument here. The world is a bad place for most of those who live here, I do what I can to mitigate that and that helps me not have sleepless nights over swelling the coffers of Mr Bezos. Whether I think he should enjoy a good night's sleep is another matter. I'm sure he does. Sadly. 

But during lockdown when I had real fears for the local economy here I decided that from now on  I would not buy any more books from Amazon, but would buy them from our local bookshops. We have two independent bookshops; one in Kirkwall and one in Stromness. And while it would be more expensive to buy from them and not from Amazon, and many would need to be ordered rather than be found on the shelves, it was a small step I could take to help local business. I'm never in urgent need of a book and I don't buy so many physical books these days, so that neither my pocket nor my comfort was going to be greatly inconvenienced,  and it was therefore, although only a Small Thing,  a Small Thing that I could do.

We went into town last Monday when non-essential shops were allowed to open again in Scotland and I duly presented myself to the bookshop with details of the two books I wanted to order. The first was quite new, had just been reviewed in The Guardian and sounded like an excellent choice for a birthday present for our elder grandson. It was also, as it transpired, out of stock at the wholesaler and  would have to be ordered especially by them and this would take about two weeks. Well his birthday isn't until November so that's not a problem. The other one was a little more obscure; a poetry collection from 2015 but I had checked and it was still in print. The person serving me could not find it to start with. She went and talked to a colleague. The colleague pointed her elsewhere, where she did find it. She then had to ring up the suppliers to ask if it could be ordered since it was on their 'extended catalogue'. It could, but they needed my name before they would take the order from her (why? what possible difference could it make to them, I wasn't buying it from them directly!). And naturally it would take 'about two weeks'. 

So here's the thing. I was in that shop trying to order two books for about 20 minutes. There was uncertainty about whether one of them could be sourced for me and I am having to wait two weeks to get my hot sweaty mitts on them. What I could have done was buy them both from Amazon, where both were in stock, with three clicks of a mouse, which would have taken about a minute  and by now I would have had them for several days. 

Is it any wonder that Amazon is successful?