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Buying Books | |
March 06th, 2022 | |
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A fedi post from @[email protected] I just read said: | |
"I've started to abuse Amazon for browsing articles, getting | |
inspirations, reading (hopefully non-fake) reviews and finding out | |
what a solid price for an article is. Then I buy my stuff | |
somewhere else." | |
For years I would go to big booksellers like Barnes & Noble or | |
Borders (before it shut down) to browse books and discover | |
interesting things only to then purchase them online from Amazon | |
where it was much cheaper. Sometimes I'd even purchase while I was | |
still there browsing. I felt so clever. | |
My battle then was against the big bookseller who came in and | |
killed so many beloved tiny bookshops. Amazon was the scrappy | |
alternative in my mind, and a means of revenge. | |
These days I will browse Amazon for things, read reviews, gather | |
intel, and then purchase else where, just like the fedi user | |
above. I wish I could say that it was an act of will power and | |
ethical justice at work, but it's mostly because ordering from | |
Amazon to Iceland is prohibitively expensive. | |
I take solace in the world of coffee, though. When Starbucks swept | |
in and killed many of my beloved local coffee shops I did not bow | |
down, but fought back by supporting those who remained or | |
abstaining completely. When the third wave of coffee brought back | |
the renaissance of local shops I was ready to dive right in. | |
But books... sadly, my options are less stellar. For one thing | |
I try not to gather too many physical books. I can't move them | |
easily or cheaply and I end up giving them away. So I favor ebooks | |
or library books. Those I could still get cheaply from Amazon, | |
I suppose. The general mentality that "Amazon isn't affordable" | |
I've developed here seems to have clouded that issue in my head. | |
I'm more likely to seek a 3rd party site, direct-from-author | |
purchase, or grab from the library. For older works, out-of-print | |
stuff, or obscure things I dust off my tor browser and visit | |
z-library. | |
Anyway, not sure where I was going with this, but there ya go. |