Occupy Amazon?

The North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Inde­pen­dent Book­sellers trade show in Oak­land last week added another chap­ter to the organization’s activist rep­u­ta­tion. The fol­low­ing is taken from today’s Shelf Aware­ness, 10/​31/​2011:

NCIBA Book­sellers Chal­lenge Moore to Occupy Amazon

After “get­ting dis­tracted” a cou­ple of blocks away while mak­ing an appear­ance in sup­port of the thou­sands of pro­tes­tors gath­ered at Occupy Oak­land, Michael Moore was late for his appear­ance at a “spe­cial event” at this year’s North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Inde­pen­dent Book­sellers Asso­ci­a­tion trade show last Fri­day evening. But no one seemed to mind.

After speak­ing non­stop and enter­tain­ingly for more than an hour to a group of book­sellers who could be described as mem­bers of his “choir,” things got inter­est­ing when he opened up the floor for questions.

First Praveen Madan, co-​​owner of the Book­smith in San Fran­cisco, asked Moore how to edu­cate the pub­lic that unequal dis­counts offered to big retail­ers like Ama­zon put indie retail­ers at a huge dis­ad­van­tage. Then Brad Jones, co-​​owner of Books­mart in Mor­gan Hill, made a direct challenge.

Try­ing “not to sound dis­re­spect­ful,” Jones asked if NCIBA mem­bers sold his new book, Here Comes Trou­ble (Grand Cen­tral), at their cost (bring­ing the con­sumer price closer to the dis­count Ama­zon can offer), would the celebrity pro-​​indie author not sell his books on Amazon?

“Jimmy just walked out of the room,” Moore joked, point­ing to where Hachette’s Jimmy Franco had been stand­ing by the door. Then he said, “I’m actu­ally think­ing about it. This is so freak­ing cool. You can’t put ideas like that in my head.”

For the next 10 min­utes, Moore debated his wish to help the inde­pen­dent book­sellers he sup­ports and his oblig­a­tions to be a good author for a pub­lisher he described as being very good to him. He noted that Hachette orig­i­nally had planned to print Here Comes Trou­ble in India, but in a last-​​minute mid­night call, he was told the com­pany arranged for the books to be printed in Vermont.

Moore added that he had heard that Lady Gaga–whose forth­com­ing book from Hachette has an announced print run of 750,000–had stip­u­lated in her con­tract that her books had to be printed in the U.S. at a union shop.

“How old is this woman?” he asked the crowd of about 150. He went on to say of the 24-​​year-​​old pop star: “And she was smarter than me? I have so much hope with these kids that we raised.”

Moore made no com­mit­ment and left mulling over what might hap­pen if a few major authors chose such a model. Then he thanked the book­sellers for the challenge.

At Saturday’s break­fast, David Guter­son put aside his pre­pared remarks after wit­ness­ing the exchange between Moore and NCIBA mem­bers the night before. The Other, Guterson’s novel directly pre­ced­ing his new book, Ed King (Knopf), dealt with the “inher­ent hypocrisy we all face on a daily basis,” he said. While he couldn’t offer a quick answer on how to over­come this hypocrisy, he said that ask­ing ques­tions when peo­ple are tak­ing to the streets to protest eco­nomic inequal­ity is very impor­tant. Ulti­mately, he said, it is what he addresses in Ed King, a novel that retells the Oedi­pus story, which at its core is about a king’s arro­gance and blind­ness to him­self. “What if an entire nation was being deluded about itself?” asked Guterson.

“That was worth get­ting up for,” com­mented Michael Barnard, the morning’s emcee, NCIBA pres­i­dent and owner of Rakestraw Books in Danville, Calif.

The book­sellers’ chal­lenge to Michael Moore dom­i­nated the trade show’s con­ver­sa­tions, and many con­sid­ered the issues of pos­si­ble anti-​​trust and price collusion.

“I think one of the things that Michael Moore dis­cov­ered is that Ama­zon is our Wall Street,” NCIBA exec­u­tive direc­tor Hut Lan­don said.

Oren Teicher, CEO of the Amer­i­can Book­sellers Asso­ci­a­tion, said he already reached out to Moore to con­tinue the dis­cus­sion of how to change the book busi­ness model to even the play­ing field for retail­ers. “The good news is that a lot of peo­ple are think­ing about how the busi­ness needs to change,” said Teicher. “David Guter­son is think­ing about this too, and that is help­ful. Hav­ing the authors help us rein­vent the model is indispensible.”

Teicher has pointed out on vis­its to NCIBA that many inter­est­ing and mean­ing­ful ideas have emerged from this group of book­sellers, who his­tor­i­cally have been pio­neers on issues impor­tant to the book busi­ness, such as the effort to require online retail­ers to col­lect sales taxes.

Will this NCIBA lead to an Occupy Ama­zon move­ment? As Moore pointed out, with thou­sands of pro­tes­tors all over the coun­try, “This is a new day in Amer­ica.” –Brid­get Kinsella

Thank you Bridget–great reporting!