How Amazon Pulled Off the Biggest Bait-And-Switch In Bookstore History

[image description: Shelves full of books inside a bookstore.]

I have some complicated feelings about Amazon.

While I think Amazon is a wholly unethical, heartless, immoral company for the way it treats its employees and preys upon small businesses and I personally choose to spend my dollars elsewhere, I realize that having that choice is a point of privilege.

For folks who don’t have extra dollars to choose the ethical spending option, those cheap prices matter. And for folks living in book deserts with underfunded library systems, Amazon may be the only way they can get the books they want. I never want to judge people for doing what they have to do to read and survive.

That being said, being pissed at Amazon is different than being pissed at the people who shop there. I only judge people who shop there when they do have other choices and can afford to make other choices. I don’t want to blame people who are forced to participate in a flawed system — but I do blame the system.

Caveats out of the way, just when I thought I couldn’t despise Amazon more, their actions in the wake of coronavirus earned them a new level of disgust from me.

A quick history of Amazon. The company started out as an online bookstore because indie bookstores, at the time, weren’t really selling online. The…