Is Amazon killing independent bookstores by not collecting sales tax? Not really..

After reading on David Streitfeld's article on the New York Times on Amazon's efforts to avoid collecting sales tax in California (as well as other states), I was thinking about the importance of this refusal on independent bookstores.

The problem? "Any Californian who buys a book or a DVD player from Amazon is supposed to pay a use tax when filing state taxes. In practice, however, few do." And Bill Dombrowski, head of the California Retailers Association, adds "Amazon is killing our business in bricks-and-mortar stores."

I believe Amazon's refusal to collect sales tax is wrong and immoral, but is it really killing indie bookstores? I decided to check it out.

I heard yesterday a great book review of Maureen Corrigan on "The Submission" by Amy Waldman and decided to check what happens if I live in Novato, California and want to purchase this book. For my unscientific experiment I compared an online order from three independent bookstores located in San Francisco (The Booksmith, City Lights Books, Green Apple Bookstore) and an online order from Amazon.

	Amazon	City Lights	Booksmith	Green Apple
Book price	13.68	26	26	27
Shipping	3.99	10	8	5.9
Tax	0	2.21	2.21	2.3
Total	17.67	38.21	36.21	35.2
Sales tax as part of the difference between the store and Amazon:
		11%	12%	13%

Bottom line: What kills indie bookstores is the fact that Amazon sells books in half price and provides much cheaper shipping. Not the sales tax. Even if Amazon will start paying sales tax tomorrow (and they definitely should), indie books are still going to be in trouble with such a difference in costs.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

My article on Triple Pundit on the elimination of the automatic delivery of white pages in California

I'd like to update you on a new article I published today on Triple Pundit entitled "California Stops Automatic Delivery of White Pages. Will Yellow Pages be Next?":

Here's the first paragraph of the article:

Last Thursday California joined a unique book club, which already includes 16 other states. This book club doesn’t celebrate the release of new books, but actually promotes the disappearance of one. This is still a celebration because we’re talking about a book that is redundant and wasteful, and yet about 6 million Californians receive a new copy of it every year without being asked if they want or need it. If you haven’t guessed yet, we’re talking about the White Pages.

To read the full article go to http://www.triplepundit.com/2011/06/california-stops-automatic-delivery-white-pages-will-yellow-pages-be-next/

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!