Amazon is the bully on the playground, shaking down the weaker kids for their lunch money. As The New York Times reports, Amazon is engaging in what some are calling blackmail and extortion to force book publishers to pay higher rates or else. The or else has taken the form of delayed book shipments, book price increases or, in some cases, the disappearance of titles altogether. These tactics are not just bad business practice and potentially illegal, they stifle crucial information. They hurt publishers and authors, yes, but they harm readers even more. And interestingly, they injure students.
Many of my students have learning disabilities, struggle with reading, or simply refuse to read. Desperate to teach them the critical reading and writing skills they need before they leave for college, I have resorted to what I call "extreme differentiation." A non-reader who loves baseball and is a varsity shortstop? Quick: One-click the new Babe Ruth biography so that he can read excerpts and write a reaction paper on them. Disengaged, "Black-Ops"-loving dyslexic? Quick: One-click World War Z and ask him to compare and contrast the various zombie apocalypses with which he is familiar. A diligent ELL student fresh from Afghanistan, bravely wearing her headscarf, struggling to learn the intricacies of English grammar? Quick: One-click I Am Malala and ask her to respond personally to the heroism of a girl not unlike herself.
But Amazon is foiling more than my desperate and expensive catch-as-catch-can method of engaging students with texts. By eliminating the web pages of books and authors (according to The New York Times, Anne River Siddons's The Girls of August has been summarily disappeared), they prevent students not only from buying literature but also from knowing it exists. Students today treat Amazon as the Oracle: It will link them to any work by any author on any subject that they can imagine. Amazon's censorship isn't absolute--kids are free to search for and buy books other ways--but frankly, they may not. If they don't know a book exists, how can they read it?
This is where my plug for independent booksellers comes in. My local bookstore will kindly order any title I want that they don't have on their shelves. Maybe I can't get it overnight, but I can ususally get it within a couple of days. This is also where I plug our local library. Not only are they accommodating about finding books through interlibrary loan, but they also are free. Perhaps this is a chance for me to break my addiction to One-Click and to teach my students about the importance of freedom of information and competition in the marketplace.
One thing is certain: I am boycotting Amazon until they cease holding publishers hostage for higher payments and eliminating the titles of those who won't comply.
Want to join me?
Boycott:
https://blog.zolabooks.com/we-stand-with-readers-support-hachette-authors/
More reading:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/23/amazon-escalates-its-battle-against-hachette/?hpw&rref=business
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/05/22/one-womans-lonely-boycott-of-amazon/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
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