Every last week of September, the American Library Association organizes Banned Books Week. This celebration of the freedom to read calls attention to the restrictions that schools, municipalities and even state governments have placed on certain books over the years. Actual banning has become unusual, but that does not stop people from challenging the distribution of certain books.
From “The Grapes of Wrath” by John Steinbeck to “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison — still the second-most challenged book since 2013, after Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” — and from “Fifty Shades of Grey” to “The Hunger Games,” books are policed for their content. Sexual explicitness, violence and religious viewpoint are three of the most-cited reasons for demanding a ban.
While the motivations for challenges are similar everywhere, the frequency with which such challenges appear is wildly variable. In 2013, there were no challenges in Rhode Island, or in Nevada, or in the Dakotas. Texas, though, saw more than 30, and North Carolina more than 10. The local nature of the challenges immediately reveals that it is not so much the content of the book as the sensibilities of the readers that motivate them.
Challenges reveal what communities do not want to talk about. In Texas, as Annie Julia Wyman wrote in a New Yorker article last week, parents were concerned about “anti-capitalist sentiment” in “The Glass Castle,” Jeanette Walls’ memoir about growing up in poverty in the Southwest and West Virginia. “The Working Poor: Invisible in America” by journalist David K. Shipler was singled out for review for the same reason. The pain — and sometimes shame — of poverty described in the books were apparently too uncomfortable for certain members of the affluent community to discuss.
Incidents such as these garner mass publicity, with free speech advocates and civil liberties organizations lining up to denounce assaults on the freedom to read. Banning books seems archaic, outdated in a society that places a premium on free speech.
Yet it is still happening, albeit in a different form. The main threat to book culture in the United States comes from a wholly different corner, and in a different incarnation of censorship. Amazon disrupts the distribution of books based not on their content, but on abstract economic concerns. Its ongoing battle with publishing giant Hachette Book Group — a conglomeration of presses, including the Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes — means thousands of books are subject to artificial shipping delays or even shown online as out of stock. Hachette imprints are responsible for authors such as J.K. Rowling, David Sedaris, David Foster Wallace, Sherman Alexie and James Patterson.
The reason is a dispute over the prices of e-books, which Amazon wants to get down to $9.99 or less. Amazon currently sells about 41 percent of all new books in the United States, and almost two-thirds of all e-books, so its importance cannot be underestimated. At first glance, it’s easy to see only the benefits of Amazon’s push for low prices to us as consumers. We all shop on Amazon: Its books are cheap, and its delivery is lightning fast, especially after Amazon rolled out its Prime benefits for college students. But the low prices Amazon offers mean it is pushing hundreds of small booksellers and publishers out of business.
Part of the real concern is how Amazon is wielding its power selectively through a variety of tactics. Instead of using next-day delivery, Amazon now only offers Hachette books with a two- to five-week shipping warning, no longer allows pre-orders on them and allegedly makes some books or authors unfindable in its search machine. In addition, Amazon does not promote any of the books nor make discounts available for them.
But what’s worrisome is that not all Hachette books receive this treatment. Paul Ryan’s “The Way Forward” was stocked and discounted by Amazon after he voiced his dissatisfaction about Amazon’s “power play” at a CNBC appearance. Consequently, his book has sold many more copies than other Hachette books and appeared on its bestseller list.
With many Americans purchasing their books through Amazon, such unevenness amounts to censorship. It dictates what is brought to the attention of customers, who can afford to purchase it and what can be purchased at all. While consumers can still find the books at local retailers and stores such as Barnes and Noble, it’s the economic ecosystem that’s at stake here.
Hachette and other publishers fear Amazon’s increasing power in the booksellers market will mean decreased revenue for them and their authors, but also that dozens of small booksellers eventually will go out of business. The latter is the real concern. If Amazon usurps the book market, there’s no reason why it can’t do the same in other branches, such as electronics or even groceries. In the end, such a monopoly will harm the consumer much more than a slightly more expensive e-book.
Authors are joining the fray to oppose Amazon’s tactics. In May, Patterson called the prospect of Amazon controlling the book market “a national tragedy” for the effect this would have on small businesses. In a New York Times article last week, agent Andrew Wylie went one step further, lamenting that “if Amazon is not stopped, we are facing the end of literary culture in America.”
Wylie urged his authors to join Authors United, an initiative that seeks to reverse the boycott of Hachette books and calls on the Department of Justice to start an investigation of Amazon for violating antitrust legislation. Philip Roth, V.S. Naipaul, Salman Rushdie and many others have signed on. Alexie started The Indies First Campaign, which consists of authors and publishers and encourages consumers to buy from local independent bookstores rather than online companies.
The consumer truly is king here: Even if we don’t wholly renounce Amazon, changing book-buying patterns will nudge the company into seeing that it should not aim to monopolize the market even further. Providence has a wide array of independent bookstores that might be slightly pricier than Amazon but that employ locals and frequently host events for the community. Books on the Square, Symposium Books and even Brown’s own bookstore come to mind. They have author talks, book clubs and storytimes for children.
This type of community fostering can simply not be provided by Amazon. Buying local may hurt your wallet a little, but ultimately the city’s literary life will flourish because of it.
Suzanne Enzerink GS (suzanne_enzerink@brown.edu) loves to read and lives two blocks from Books on the Square.
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