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More than 250 antique book dealers in 24 countries are removing more than one million books from a site owned by Amazon for a week, an impromptu protest after the site suddenly decided to ban sellers from several countries.
The lightning strike against the site, AbeBooks, which began on Monday, is a rare concerted action by sellers against any part of Amazon, which relies on third-party sellers for most of its merchandise and revenue. The protest comes as more and more attention is focused on the considerable power exerted by Amazon as a retailer – a power that is most important in books.
Stores call their action Banned Booksellers Week. The protest began after the publisher sent e-mails to booksellers in countries such as South Korea, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Russia in October, announcing that it was not "Would support" more.
"We apologize for this inconvenience," said the company.
As the news spread, even unaffected retailers were surprised and angry. AbeBooks, with Amazon itself, is by far the largest international market for rare and occasional books.
AbeBooks lists millions of books and manages payments. Booksellers send books directly from their stores. The service was founded in 1995 and was purchased by Amazon in 2008. It continues to operate autonomously and many of its customers do not even realize who the owner is. AbeBooks is located in Victoria, British Columbia.
The subsidiary of Amazon told the International League of Antique Dealers that it was downsizing because "it is no longer viable for us to operate in these countries. because of rising costs and complexity. "
On the night of Saturday to Thursday, in response to a question from a reporter, AbeBooks said that she was abandoning the countries because "our third-party payment service provider closes its doors at the end of the year." ;year". to serve all the sellers. "
Since the bookshop is controlled by the booksellers, the only way for protesting booksellers is to mark their companies "on vacation". Some participating booksellers began doing this over the weekend.
David Streitfeld is a New York Times writer.
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