Melville House Books

Now that the dust has settled from the first major battle of the “ebook pricing wars,” or whatever you want to call what went on between Amazon and Macmillan, one inquiring former bookseller — in this rather scathing but clear-eyed essay — has a question:

… many of the commentaries about this publishing conflict fall short of addressing an important aspect of this discussion. Essentially the format has been accepted and now the big players are jockeying for control. So I ask you, nostalgia shelved neatly at the dusty back next to poetry, what the hell is happening to bookstores in all this? … You know, those places you wander into, have long arguments with the proprietor and find books you’ve never seen advertised on Amazon or faced out in a Barnes & Noble.

Paul Oliver, formerly the co-owner of Wolfgang Books in Philadelphia, says he imagines the solution is “a sort of hybrid bookstore/blog that serves the role of literary muckraker (ahem), selling e-books online.” Only there’s a problem — “this is about control and not the object itself…. This is because the major players in all this are retailers and not wholesalers.” And the little guys aren’t being allowed to participate in the pricing conversation, either.

And what is left to the small bookstore? To ask communities to get behind them? To hope people are willing to buy something at a higher cost that they can have for cheaper online?

Let me tell you, he says sadly, one of the biggest kicks I have ever received to the nuts happened every day I received the mail of the neighbors who lived above Wolfgang Books. Once a week without fail, sometimes twice, there would be a book shipped from Amazon.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.