[B-Greek] Advertising books on the list

James Ernest j.d.ernest at bc.edu
Thu Apr 3 08:20:24 EDT 2008


Carl wrote:
> I won't complain of a URL that points to a notice about a book
> that may be of interest to list-members; what is questionable --
> and what I'd strongly beg you not to do -- is giving a URL and
> citing the price on list in order to procure business for one's
> own firm or for a firm one is seeking to promote competitively.

> And while I'm grumbling, this whole marketing operation . . .

I think I grasp the intent of the above, but the distinction between
providing information and advertising is not quite that clean and
simple.Posting an Amazon link simply to provide "notice about a book
that may be of interest to list-members" is already to participate
willy-nilly in the bookselling world's largest "marketing operation."

Personally I don't mind either the Amazon links or Jim's occasional
yieldings to the impulse to say "Ahem . . . as long as all this free
advertising is going on, may I point out that we sell that book also?"
To post an Amazon link for purely noncommercial informational purposes
and then complain that the rejoinder is a "marketing operation" shows
a bit of unawareness about the world in which specialty booksellers
must operate. Which of them wouldn't love to get all the web traffic
that Amazon gets thanks to pointers from people who don't even see
themselves as providing free advertising? How many smaller booksellers
close up shop each year because the customers they are trying to serve
buy online at Amazon (sometimes after scoping the books out in their
stores or on their websites)? For them, it would be absolutely
stunning to see "Amazon" and "noncommercial" or "noncompetitive" held
together in the same thought. Amazon is a juggernaut that devours
specialty booksellers' breakfast, lunch, and high tea every day of the
year.

People who don't want to post commercials could post links to HOLLIS
or LOC records and leave listmembers to find their own booksellers.
It's no good posting Amazon links and then grumbling about others'
"competitive" attempts to "procure business."

If we're concerned about motives and profits: Most of the periti on
this list--professors and booksellers included--had the brains and
talents to make a lot more money doing something else. We're all here
because of something we valued more highly than the dollar. Teaching
is a non-for-profit profession whereby people who choose to serve in
that way earn their daily bread and usually not much more. Specialty
publishing and bookselling in academic biblical studies is sometimes
technically not-for-profit, more often technically for-profit; I think
the difference is pretty hard to grasp for most people I know who work
in the field.

The B-GREEK world is small. We need a lot of patience and mutual
forbearance and support.

James Ernest
(who works as an editor for a company that publishes academic books in
biblical studies and sells through both Amazon and specialty channels,
including Eisenbrauns, and appreciates them all in different ways)



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