Raven Book Store tweeted this informative thread about why you should consider buying your books from a local bookstore instead of from a giant online bookseller, even though it might cost a little bit more. It’s important to reiterate – this post is meant only to be informative. It’s not meant to tell people what to do or shame anyone. But if you want to support local bookstores, here’s why books may be more expensive there:
Source: Raven Book Store
Entitled people and people who don’t buy many books can afford to pay more for a book than they need to. People who aren’t looking for a specific book but just want something cool to read can go to a used book store. Those of us who aren’t made out of money, buy a ton of books, and want specific books (probably because we already HAVE most of the books that we’d be interested in at the used book store) have to be frugal about it.
You don’t have to. You choose to. You could simply buy fewer books, buy used books, use your local libraries etc.
Clearly that person lives in a very different world to me. I’ve never known any local bookstore do any of those things. The big chain bookstores might host a big name author on a signing tour, I known public libraries to organise signings with authors (people can bring in books they already own by the author to be signed), but not independent book stores.