Bookselling in the 21st Century: The Perils of Shopping Local | Literary Hub

These are clarion calls for booksellers to rally around and encourage the consumer to make the conscious decision to buy books from bricks-and-mortar bookstores rather than Amazon. A couple years ago, the American Booksellers Association hired a non-partisan firm to research the economic impact of Amazon. The results were astounding, and got even more so when the study was updated to include 2015: Amazon's stranglehold on our economy has caused a net loss of over 200,000 jobs, a sales tax loss of over $700 million, a property tax loss of more than $500 million, and a net national revenue loss of $1.2 billion. Yes, BILLION. Each day, Amazon gets closer to becoming a monopoly and a monopsony, vertically integrating in a way that dominates all levels of our retail economy in nearly every consumer market.