Petition for Amazon.com
by Victor Schwartzman on October 21, 2007
Originally posted at: www.thepetitionsite.com
tags: alternative writing, independent authors, independent publishers, underground writing,Leave a comment (4 so far)
We have started a petition of interest to all independent authors and publishers. Please read on!
Outsider Writers, and the people signing this petition, urge Amazon.com to add an “Alternative” literature listing under its “Books” pull-down menu. Alternative Literature needs a room of its own. I have spent close to a year trying to get Amazon to make a decision on this issue without a response, so now it is time to see if people who buy and sell books on Amazon want to see Amazon.com have an “Alternative Literature” listing.
Amazon is an extremely important online sales tool for independent publishers and authors. Bookstore shelf space is more limited than ever, and it can be impossible to find new poetry or fiction from independent publishers. That is why independent publishers increasingly use online sites such as Amazon.com to market their books.
There are thousands and thousands of products listed on Amazon, but Amazon has made it easy to browse through products until you find what you want. Its site has pull down menus for main product categories. Click on “Books” and you will find extensive listings for everything from Graphic Novels to Performing Arts to SF and Fantasy. There is even a Poetry category. There is not such a Literature category, though.
The Amazon system works well if you want to browse through mainstream publications, or if you already know the author and/or title. But if you are looking for “Alternative” you have a problem. There is no Alternative category. The Alternative literature is there, but it is crowded out by the mainstream books. If you don’t know exactly what Alternative writing you are looking for, you won’t find it--but if you want to browse you will find plenty o’ pages listing books, but the Alternative writing is buried among the mainstream products.
It is time for Amazon to create an Alternative listing in its Books section, dedicated to alternative/underground poetry, fiction and prose. Amazon can start by simply listing books from small, independent publishers, and then can create subsections under Alternative, for poetry, flash fiction, political writing, and other subgroups. This would be great for publishers, authors, readers--and Amazon itself.
Victor Schwartzman
Outsider Writers
www.outsiderwriters.org
You can find the petition at:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/amazoncom-should-create-an-alternative-literature-section
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Comments
The only problem I see is in defining alternative literature.
Look at music. In the 60’s & 70’s, radio stations played Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc. In the 90’s “alternative” radio stations came out, playing Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc. But now, my son looks at Nirvana & Pearl jam the way Grungers looked at Zeppelin & Floyd.
I don’t know if any of this is relevant to books. Just a thought.
– Bill Ectric (10/24 at 24-Oct 09:54 -05:00)
Your analogy to popular music is nothing more than definition by market: “alternative” is anything that doesn’t sell?
The bigger problem--"alternative" is definition by negation, which is no definition at all.
If there’s a real issue here, you’re not going to identify it by creating a new genre--I should say, pseudo-genre. It’s not about a neglected class of books, it’s about the institutional mechanisms that create those classifications, that select what gets put on the front tables and what doesn’t. It’s about authority: a complicated web of publishers, libraries, agents reviewers and academics. It would take a different structure of authority to promote a different sort of literature, a new “main stream.”
The interesting question is, what role are the literary weblogs going to play in the future? What influence will they have (will we who manage and post on them chose to have)? Are we part of a revolution--or a gravitational micro-shift, moving the center, or broadening it by a some barely measurable degree?
What effect do the blogs have on reading habits? On book sales? Excluding classics and titles by authors I’ve been following for some time [Powers, Coetzee, McCarthy, Kalfus]--all of the books that I’ve bought in the past six months (more than 100 books)--I’ve come to through the web.
I like books that challenge me as a reader, that make me work for my pleasure--so I’m probably not a typical reader--whatever that is--so don’t know what to make of this--but I do know that the web is the place to look for the kind of books that excite me.
Does that make me a reader of “alternative literature?” Not a question I can take seriously.
– Jacob Russell (10/24 at 24-Oct 10:40 -05:00)
Thanks for the comments to date! I hope that you have considered going to the site & signing the petition. I have had some interesting feedback mostly on the issues raised in the “comments” about whether “alternative” is the best word to use. Originally, I suggested “underground” to Amazon, but then suggeested “alternative” as more flexible.
However, one author emailed me with this suggestion: “small presses”. As we’re looking at independent publishers to begin with, “small presses” would probably work much better as a heading. Later we could always get into what is “alternative” these days. And, yes, an “alternative” Amazon would be nice, that was far more user friendly towards those of us who don’t want to buy an Abba album or read the oeuvre of Harold Robbins. That isn’t to say there is not a lot of great stuff on Amazon, just that it is hard to find if you do not know exactly what you are looking for.
Please consider signing the petition! & keep them comments rolling in!
– Victor Schwartzman (10/24 at 24-Oct 10:50 -05:00)
Page 1 of 1 pages of comments
Beyond Independent publishers, how would you define “alternative literature” in a way that makes sense, and doesn’t imply inferior status.
I see a problem here in mixing two incompatible methods of classification. Is this basically a market term, or does it have qualitative meaning--if so, what?
Maybe what we need is an “alternative” Amazon.
– Jacob Russell (10/22 at 22-Oct 08:16 -05:00)