(cc photo: J Brew)
In recent years, as an observant patron of bookstores in the Washington, D.C., area, I’ve noticed an unusual selection bias at the Books-A-Million chain. Its bookshelves are not very congenial to nonfiction books by liberals, progressives, be they muckrakers, politicians or autobiographers.
The Washington, D.C., area, it is fair to say, is not cut from the same cloth as Birmingham, Alabama, where Books-A-Million has its national headquarters. Washington, D.C., is overwhelmingly a liberal, Democratic city.
Yet try as I might, getting these stores to carry my books, not to mention display them away from back-of-the-store corners, has been difficult. I’ve offered to sign the books and to have book signings, but to no avail, even though there is a following for these and other progressive books in the neighborhoods. I’ve written my complaints to the chain’s CEO, Terrance G. Finley, but have received no response.
So I began to chat about this situation with the employees who work there. At first, there was the figurative arched eyebrow when I raised the matter of bias. Pressing further, I elicited comments such as “Don’t you know who owns this book chain? People who don’t like certain liberals and progressives and slant their stock with more conservative or right-wing authors.”
“They just don’t like you,” said another, in a fit of perplexed candor.
Last month, I walked into a Books-A-Million store and asked whether they had my latest book Told You So or my forthcoming book Unstoppable: The Emerging Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State. With a little sign of resignation, the clerk, after checking, said no, but she would order some of the Unstoppable books. “But,” she added, “then it has to go through Birmingham.”
Conservative pundit Laura Ingraham giving a talk at a Books-a-Million in Perrysburg, Ohio. (cc photo: Vicki Timman)
Pursuing my curiosity a little further, I went to the chain’s listing of recent and coming book events for authors. Not surprisingly, they were mostly fiction, self-help, entertainment, or spiritual, evangelical topics. Nonfiction events, regardless of where they were located in the country, rarely covered any of the many authors of good-selling corporate exposés about the power and abuses of the plutocracy.
Of course, as a private business, Books-A-Million can stock and sell whatever books it chooses, even if those selections leave out ones that could increase the company’s revenues in receptive localities. That is its right.
But shouldn’t more people know about Books-A-Million behaving as if it were the Koch brothers’ chain of bookstores? Or, more clinically, shouldn’t this selective branding be considered a little newsworthy by the media?
If more people were aware of what has been ideologically dictated from the chain’s Birmingham, Alabama, headquarters, they just might avoid patronizing these stores. Or better yet, they could insist that the chain’s management unchain its book buyers so that they allow broader expressions of the First Amendment through its doors and at its author events.
A late-breaking breakthrough: Ralph Nader has been invited to do a book signing at the Books-A-Million store in Washington, D.C.’s Dupont Circle at noon on May 20.
It was a pleasant surprise to see Mr. Nader here on FAIR, particularly when he suggests that boycotts might be a good way to combat the truth blackout now being financed by the Koch brothers and Sheldon Adelson.
As always, the Corpse-arations are not here to provide a service, or produce a product. They are here to control your life, and treat you like a by-product of consumption.
What I have never been able to figure out is, why they think they should be allowed to exist, let alone be supported with special tax privileges. At least the original corporations in the beginning were created in order to do something that would be extremely difficult, if not impossible to do by one or two people alone, and not were expected to make a billion % profit per dime spent.
They have outlived their usefulness and have been stolen and perverted by those who have sold their humanity for gold. Sad really, when you think about it.
Judging a bookstore
By what it covers
This is another reason why it is so important to support independent, progressive bookstores. The group I work with, Teaching for Change, owns and operates the independent, non-profit bookstore at the 14th & V location of Busboys and Poets in D.C. We always carry Ralph Nader’s books and co-host his talks. But since so many people buy their books at Amazon and big-box stores, our finances are shaky. So, yes, pressure places like Books-A-Million to carry Nader’s books — AND remember to support independent bookstores.
We’ve got a Books a Million in our town in Michigan. It is a sorry excuse for a bookstore, with tens of feet of Christian and rightwing politics books and only a smattering of titles that represent leftist politics and non-Christian points of view. I only support a local independent bookstore (which is doing better than BAM)
I think Mr Naders books are always well done, and deserve to be placed in just as prominent a position as lets say Rush Limbaugh.From a business standpoint it would be stupid not to do so.
This is so par for the course for a book chain headquartered in a white-trash third-world-state.