nosce te ipsum [translation]

We stopped in the bookshop to ask for directions to the nearest Mexican food, but I'd ended up buying something, mainly because I feel bad getting good directions without buying something.

While I'm standing there waiting for my purchase to be rung up, I noticed a Booksense poster on the wall. I've since found this article detailing the campaign behind the poster (you can see the PDF version of the poster on the same site here).

Though I'm certainly partial to independent booksellers, I found the misleading errors in the poster to be rather distressing. The poster contrasts California "independent" booksellers with Amazon.com on four numerically-measured points:

• In-store author appearances
• Local charity donations
• Local people employed
• Sales taxes collected

Charity donations was a mostly valid point in 2004, but considering the millions that Amazon.com has collected for the American Red Cross and other charities, I'm not sure it's a relevant comparison, either. Now that the winners of the Amazon.com Nonprofit Innovation Award have been announced, this bulletpoint is even more irrelevant.

Which leaves us with in-store author appearances. This one's hard to counter, actually, aside from original works from popular authors that aren't available anywhere else, the numerous author interviews, and fun little promotions that Amazon.com has run over the years.

The thing that most annoyed me about the poster is that the topic is one that deserves a good thinking-over, and the poster does the subject no justice. Still, I'll give you points for trying, NCIBA.

Last updated by eric Sun Oct 16 11:27 2005 | omission | link