Late on Friday, my book, along with thousands of titles by Macmillan authors, vanished from Amazon. MacMillan titles (Macmillan umbrellas my publisher, Henry Holt, along with Farrar, Straus and Giroux, Picador, and multiple other imprints) are now available only through third party sellers, and none of our books are available on the Kindle. This whole mess apparently boils down to a debate about the pricing on Kindle books; Macmillan wants Amazon to charge more, because the 9.99 price point apparently boils down to a loss, so Amazon told them to go f*ck themselves.

Capitalism! Always fun for authors, who typically don’t see a damn dime after their advance.

I’ve blogged before about not being a fan of the Kindle (too expensive for most people, not open source, annoyingly named), have no interest whatsoever in the Nook (seriously, with that name it should come bundled with a cat), and being in the ever-shrinking group of my friends who do not own a smart phone, ebooks just never crossed my radar. I don’t have anything against them in theory, since they’re just another manner of disseminating information, but my own book fell into some sort of contractual loophole when Holt tried to design an interactive ebook version of it for iPhones/iPod touches, which somehow never quite happened. I mean, as far as I know the design happened, but the ebook didn’t. The problem with the Kindle is that it binds you to Amazon as long as you have the device, much like iPhones bind you to AT&T, whose coverage, from what I hear, is pathetic. I guess I’m just not into binding, if that’s not TMI.

I suppose this mess just underscores the same thing I’ve been saying all along. Support independent booksellers. Powell’s has signed copies of my book, IndieBound can track down a copy anywhere in the US, and if you’re lucky to live within range of a brick and mortar store, all the better. Lots of libraries have it in stock. And if your local library doesn’t have it, email me and we’ll work something out.

Edited to add: Following in the path of these other MacMillan authors, I’m removing Amazon links from my site for the time being. I’m not sure anyone who wanted to buy a book about independent culture would do so from Amazon anyway, but if you’re gonna act like a big bully, well, you can suck it.

The book will be a month old this week, and now that publicity hoo hah has died down for the time being, I did something I was warned by smart friends not to do: I looked at my Amazon sales ranking. AJ Jacobs has a funny bit about this in The Year of Living Biblically where he vows not to covet but cheats regularly by peeping at his Amazon page. He’s a best selling author so I don’t know what he’s worried about. As a person who’s trying to be more accepting of mystery, I find this exercise facinating. For example, last night the book was ranked at something like 300,000, way below the edition of Gerard Manley Hopkins I was thinking of ordering from one of their independent sellers. This morning, it’s surged to a more respectable 60K something or other. But how does that happen overnight? Is it like yeast bread and it just swells if the temperature’s right? Does that mean two or three people ordered it over the weekend?

And then there’s the issue of Amazon reviews, and right now I have none, though I have the feeling one or two might appear soon. I’m pretty active on Goodreads, mostly because I read a lot of books (my summer count since late May is now up to almost twelve titles, sheesh) and like to catalog them somewhere, and people write pretty snarky things there too, but the cult of Amazon reviewers is so weird. Kevin Killian, a local poet, did an entire book of his own Amazon reviews which are pretty amazing, but generally they tend to be written by people who seem to have a maniacal need to review every book ever written. It’s amazing how many reviews people can write! I find the same phenomenon happening on Yelp, where people seem to get really into reviewing every hot dog, nail shop, Big O Tires and ice cream store they visit. As a person who gets exhausted by minutae, I get tired just scrolling down the page.