Rare booksellers rallied against an Amazon-owned company and won
(From Lit Hub. Link to the complete article given below)
The typical image of an antiquarian bookstore—sitting quietly next to the banks of Lake Maggiore in northern Italy, in a modest red-shingled house near the Texas bayou, or hidden from view on the type of Parisian side road you will find only if you are lost or very, very dedicated—would not suggest the kind of unprecedented rallying cry heard this week as booksellers forced an about-face from AbeBooks, the Amazon-owned website where a number of them sell the world’s rarest titles, on a controversial decision to drop booksellers from four countries.
Late last month, AbeBooks announced that it would no longer list booksellers from the Czech Republic, South Korea, Hungary and Russia after Nov. 30. It added in a subsequent statement that “a small number of sellers will be impacted as we migrate to a new payment service provider.” Now, after a massive protest by antiquarian booksellers, AbeBooks said Wednesday morning that it would reverse the decision.
So what just happened?
The original announcement—in particular, its abruptness and corporate-seeming, impersonal language—ruffled many in the community who have long regarded AbeBooks, which was bought by Amazon in 2008, with suspicion, even as they rely on it. It also brought alarm from at least one bookseller in the Czech Republic.
