The Mumpsimus

Every time Amazon flexes its muscle to reveal just how powerful its monopoly is (cf. the latest brouhaha ), I grow a bit more uncomfortable making all the book title links on this blog ones that go to Amazon and, through their Associates program, send back some spare change to me.  I mean, I know I'm immoral for using Amazon so much, but I've already admitted to being a pox upon the bookselling body in general.  In most of my choices as a consumer, I'm a pox upon the entire world, a blight of bourgeois indifference, a hemmorhoid on the......  Well, you get the idea. But what about you?  Why should Amazon be the only choice you have when following a link to find out more information about a book, and possibly to order a copy for yourself?  Why should I force you to be the same sort of immoral pox-blight-hemmorhoid as I? I've stuck with the Amazon Associates program for, as I said on David Moles's blog , reasons of inertia and of not knowing of...

Levi Asher is on a quest to find out why books are so expensive. He's just posted a fascinating series of short interviews with publisher Richard Nash, novelist and blogger Mark Sarvas, and agent Scott Hoffman. As Mark points out, in comparison to going out to see a movie, buying a book is not a horrendously expensive activity. And in comparison to going to the theatre, it's downright cheap. But, as Colleen can attest, I had a strong reaction when I grabbed the new Best American Poetry , a wee 192 pages, and saw the price was $16. It went right back onto the table from which I picked it up. I haven't bought a BAP since Lyn Heijinian's 2004 volume , which was also $16 (for 288 pages), but I ordered that one online and for a sharp discount, which is probably what I'll do for the new edition (the editor, Heather McHugh , is a poet I like quite a bit -- I buy BAPs for the guest editors, not the contents, really). Later, I asked myself what price I would have b...