The question of what kind of world we want to live in can’t easily be boiled down to a single decision, and I would love for it not be reduced to a choice to shop one place or another. But here we are.

To call Amazon’s violent grab for market share an act of evil is grossly overstating the fact. It’s scary and ill-considered, but it’s not evil. Shopping with them is equally ill-considered, but it’s not evil either. There is something shark-like, or maybe reptilian about Amazon. Amazon has an urge that even Amazon doesn’t seem to know about and that urge is to eat the market. To demolish it. What Amazon eats, it kills; and what it sells, it devalues. Amazon can get you your product for less, but that’s just about all they can do. They do it at the expense of the people who make books. And while it’s clear is that I am a bookseller and not a zoologist, neither reptiles nor sharks are evil.

Against Amazon is a nice little Tumblr-powered site I made yesterday as “an online archive to educate consumers about the problems and politics of doing business with the beast.” It’s not a call to action, but a call to some kind of education. A call to consideration. It is my desperate hope that Amazon’s customers don’t know what they’re buying–and don’t know what they’re losing. Against Amazon isn’t a moral imperative. It is my hope that enough of you share my desire to exchange good work for the money we earn, and to spend the money we earn in support of the work we love.

Reading isn’t a virtue that comes without responsibility.

When you buy a product at it’s “lowest price ever,” those extra dollars are wrung from somewhere–please, consider where and at what cost. When you don’t pay state sales tax, consider which benefits and services you’re short-changing, and picture for a moment a world in which more people use, say, basic infrastructure like a road, than are willing to maintain it.

To single Amazon out is overstating, again, their role in this changing world. But the day we both recognize Amazon for what it is, it’s a start. And Against Amazon is just another push toward that day.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again and again to anyone who will listen: spending money is a political act. Every day and every dollar is a ballot cast for the kind of world you want to live in. I hope I’ll surprise you when I say that there is no right or wrong answer here. This is a question of personal ethics and values, and not of anything absolute. But it is a choice that needs to be made consciously. I’m not asking you to save independent publishing or independent bookstores for our own sakes. I’m asking you to save them for yourselves.

If you have news articles or blogs, past or present, to contribute, please send them to me at AgainstAmazon[at]gmail.com.  And if you disagree with my intention, well, let me know. We’ll talk about it.