Ep. 29: How to Resist Amazon and Why with Danny Caine

The King's Co-op Bookstore

While the pandemic is great for listening to podcasts, running the bookstore right now has made it pretty tough to actually make episodes! We hosted the bookstore's first official Zoom event last night with Danny Caine, owner of Raven bookstore in Lawrence Kansas, and this episode is the recording from that live Zoom event! When a company's workers are literally dying on the job, when their business model relies on preying on local businesses and even their own vendors, when their CEO is literally the richest person in the world while their workers make low wages with impossible quotas... wouldn't you want to resist? Danny Caine, owner of Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas has been an outspoken critic of the seemingly unstoppable Goliath of the bookselling world: Amazon. In this book, he lays out the case for shifting our personal money and civic investment away from global corporate behemoths and to small, local, independent businesses. Well-researched and lively, his tale covers the history of big box stores, the big political drama of delivery, and the perils of warehouse work. He shows how Amazon's ruthless discount strategies mean authors, publishers, and even Amazon themselves can lose money on every book sold. And he spells out a clear path to resistance, in a world where consumers are struggling to get by. In-depth research is interspersed with charming personal anecdotes from bookstore life, making this a readable, fascinating, essential book for the 2020s. Pick up a copy of the book at www.kingsbookstore.ca