Tom Hodgkinson wonders whether it is possible to escape the suffocating tentacles of Bezos

It appears that my one man campaign against Amazon has failed quite spectacularly. Amazon’s share price has just shot up to a record high, for obvious reasons: we are all stuck at home.

The company is now valued at $1.14 trillion, with Jeff Bezos’s own worth standing at $138 billion. It employs nearly a million people and is currently scooping up thousands of people furloughed from other businesses.

The unstoppable deliverer of everything was founded in 1994, a year after the Idler. I remember how we scoffed in the office at this new books mail order company. “Amazon’s UK sales were less than a corner shop last year!” we trumpeted.

Later I imposed a boycott of Amazon because of its vicious undercutting. I applauded Marie Filipetti, former Minister of Culture in France, when she called Amazon “destroyer of bookshops”. And Victoria and I even opened our own independent bookshop, in a sort of perverse and doomed attempt to compete with Goliath.

My protests were ineffective. My boycott failed on two counts: not only did Amazon appear not to notice it, but later in my own house every other item on our bank statements appear to be from Amazon [most from my three teenage children]. I used to rent videos from a local store; now I rent them from Amazon. Amazon is the machine. You can’t escape it. It sells my books (though I would rather you bought them from Hive). And I think it might even sell the Idler in some digital form.

Amazon is employing absolutely everyone, from entertainers like Jeremy Clarkson, who now accepts the Amazon shilling, to warehouse workers and delivery drivers and the in-between middle class managers and spin doctors. Nothing will ever be enough for Bezos.

Amazon is nothing if not assiduous as far as its own PR goes. A couple of years ago we ran a piece in the magazine which detailed the horrors of working in Amazon’s office as a graduate trainee. Soon after publication, I received a phone call from Amazon’s London press office. The chap asked me to change our online version. He was quite insistent, though I did refuse to alter the piece. I thought it was amazing that they bothered to chase up even such a small mag as ours.

Efficiency, speed, cheapness. No one, sadly, can resist.

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after the above piece was sent as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.

Big is beautiful
What nobody has ever researched or calculated is how many small entrepreneurial businesses that would have been restricted in their access to markets, to retailers, to customers in general, have been able to reach a global audience by marketing their products via Amazon. Bezos takes his pound of flesh but offers freedom from geographic constraints. I am surprised Amazon don’t tell more of those kind of success stories
I also note that you have failed to mention that despite your years of hard work to persuade us all to adopt a more idleophile approach to life, a creepy invisible virus, supported by a global cohort of epidemiologists, has achieved in a few weeks what you couldn’t manage in a few decades.
Craig Sams, Hastings

Man up
Just to say, your campaign may be doomed but one man it ain’t – see https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/ethicalcampaigns/boycott-amazon, which also contains links to Amazon alternatives. Some of these, it has to be said, are more practicable than others.
Steve Pine

Resistance is not futile
You conclude by saying “Efficiency, speed, cheapness. No one, sadly, can resist” which to me reads as accepting defeat but clearly people do resist (even if it is misguidedly buying from Abebooks) because it is something to aspire to. I would of probably have accepted that your books are sold on Amazon, in fact I’m pretty sure I was aware of that already, but ‘No one sadly can resist’ I don’t accept, as people do. So perhaps you need to be clearer in what you were trying to say. It seems it has been a provocative piece. I totally get that Amazon has its tentacles in everything. Amazon parcels still occasionally arrive at my house too (not ordered by myself) but it doesn’t mean I can’t resist.
Throw us Amazon refuseniks a bone here Tom.
David

Don’t give up! See this NYT piece on Stacey Mitchell, director of the anti-Amazon Institute for Local Self-Reliance. Now is the time! we can start with individual bans ourselves. It is kind of fun to figure out how not to buy the things we need on Amazon.
Matt Stinchcomb
Ed: I notice that there is a copy of Kropotkin’s great book Mutual Aid on Stacey’s bookshelf

I really don’t agree that you can’t resist Amazon.
Use their website if you need it to find books, then buy them on the Waterstones website.
Andrew Parker
Ed replies: Amazon do a lot more than sell books. They run Amazon Web Services and operate a shop window for thousand of businesses. They also rent our films and make TV shows.

Glad to find a fellow spirit. I feel the same about Amazon but I have NOT used them for years. I resent how they underpay and overwork, put bookstores out of business and on and on. I sometimes pay a little more, but not always and I never signed up for Prime and I don’t care if I wait a little longer, there is nearly always a decent alternative. And it’s my small David and Goliath gesture . . . Maybe bit self-righteous but its become an easy habit for me.
Kate Wright

I’ve managed to avoid dealing with Amazon for the past seven or so years. We aren’t doomed to be forced into supporting them.
Martin

I still boycott the Prince of Darkness. That man be evil.
Tracey Wood

Like you, I can’t abide Amazon, and am depressed by the laziness that drives people to click a button instead of thinking about how they can support small, local businesses. I have two tips. My nearest independent local bookshop is Queen’s Park Books, a five minute drive/15 minute bicycle ride away. I have their number saved in my phone, and every time I read a review of a book I fancy, or someone recommends one to me, I call them up. They either have it in stock, or can get it the following day. Secondly, I am a huge fan of ABE books. I’m sure you know it already. It is a worldwide umbrella website for bookshops around the world. I have lost count of how many books I’ve bought from them, old Agatha Christies, cookery books, etc. You can narrow your search, as I do, to hardbacks with original dust wrappers, and they list them in order of price.
Camilla
Ed replies: A lovely sentiment, but Abebooks was bought by Amazon some years ago.

Bald truth
You can reflect, comfortingly, that although Jeff Bezos’s net worth has increased by another $24bn as a result of coronavirus (Radio 4, this morning) he still, unfortunately for him, looks like Jeff Bezos.
Richard Bancroft