Melville House Books

“Tech snafus” at Amazon.com are costing more and more third-party retailers more and more moneys, according to a Seattle Times report by Monica Soto Ouchi. Prairie Lea Books, for example, sold 1,000 books in July, then saw that number drop by half in August. Proprietor Tyler Eastman says, “There are constant outages.” Ouchi reports, “Some days, he can’t transfer money to his bank account. Other times, buyers can’t access his third-party listings.” Trying to buy some used books herself to test the site, Ouchi reports she was unable to do so on three tries. Another used book seller, Rebecca Oliver, tells Ouchi, “The mood right now is you just can’t depend on Amazon anymore, and you have to go to other venues. It’s just so many things.”

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