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Sarah Bringhurst Familia's avatar

Mostly I think it’s sad for people to judge anything to do with people’s book-buying habits. I believe writers should be able to make a good living AND everyone should be able to afford to read. The capitalist society we live in (within which book publishing exists) doesn’t serve either of those ends particularly well. Authors are only getting a small fraction of every book sale, and blaming people who can’t afford to buy new books for the way capitalism works is just wrong-headed. I’m much more in favor of agitating for better terms for authors than shaming people who buy used books. And while I shop at both used and new bookstores, I’m also a huge proponent of libraries. Books for free AND the authors get royalties.

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Kate Jones's avatar

You make some really good points here, Rosalynn, which I hadn't really considered in any depth before. I don't buy books from Amazon anymore, as I no longer even have an account with them. But I do buy pretty much all books second-hand, both on- and offline, and usually only if either it isn't available at my local library or I have read it from there and really want to keep a copy on my shelf. In an 'ideal' world, I would like to be able to pre-order and purchase brand new copies from local independent bookstores to support my favourite authors, but financially this just isn't viable. Also though, your point about a reader walking in and buying every book by a writer: I can think of several books I have bought at secondhand book sales without knowing the author, and have then gone on to buy everything they ever wrote! Some secondhand, some new. So I think you are right; you are doing a great service for books and writers in general!

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