[B-Greek] Advertising books on the list
Leonard Isaksson
leonardo1orchardcity at mac.com
Thu Apr 3 09:36:05 EDT 2008
I agree with Mr. Ernest, and also, with Mr. Spinti:
If we link to Amazon, while it is an help to readers here to know that
a book has come out, it also provides some business for Amazon. It is
pretty tough to be a small bookseller, or in any small business. The
'big box' retailers make it tough for such folks to have a livelihood.
It cuts them another axe blow to the tree to have 'free advertising'
given for a giant.
Perhaps not posting the price would be one way to deal with what
concerns there are. It is an help to know that such and so book is
available.
Leonard Isaksson
On Apr 3, 2008, at 6:20 AM, James Ernest wrote:
> 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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