by Dennis Johnson - Melville House
“There’s been pushback,” says America’s most famous librarian (and former indie bookseller), Nancy Pearl, about the announcement (see our earlier report) that she would be publishing a line of reprints with Amazon.com‘s publishing imprint.Pearl, famous for being an ardent champion of public libraries and independent bookstores—two things Amazon is fairly famous for not being ardent supporters of—tells Lynn Neary in this story on NPR’s Morning Edition that the pushback has been “that I’ve gone over to the dark side and allied myself with these people who are destroying the book business as we know it.” (Full disclosure: I’m quoted in the story expressing surprise at Pearl’s deal with Amazon.)
Pearl doesn’t describe the “pushback” in any more detail than that (she’s only quoted saying how happy the Amazon offer made her and her agent—telling word, that) but a front page report in her hometown newspaper, the Seattle Times, does:
The reaction from the brick-and-mortar bookshops — which have struggled first against competition from the big-box chains, and then the price-cutting Amazon — was immediate.Full story at Melville House.
By Friday, some 50 store managers and owners had emailed Thom Chambliss, executive director of the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association in Eugene, Ore.
That’s a sizable number, considering the group has 160 to 165 total members.
“Consternation,” is how Chambliss describes the content of the emails.