Government Librarians and BookTok Activists Call For Amazon Boycott To Punish Jeff Bezos For Not Endorsing Kamala Harris

BookTok and government librarians have worked to try to order an Amazon boycott after Jeff Bezos failed to endorse Kamala Harris after the election, acknowledging it will likely hurt independent authors in the process.

Amazon has always had bad business practices which led to monopolistic concerns. Their programs, such as Kindle Unlimited and Audible, force authors to get into “exclusive deals” for their books; otherwise, they risk losing out on royalty percentages, which Amazon makes it onerous to do otherwise.

Over the years, Amazon has increasingly made it more difficult to get seen on the platform, not only engaging in these practices but also making it “pay to play” to where authors have to spend money on ads to get seen instead of featuring the recommendations based on similar reads like they used to. It’s made for an environment where it is increasingly more difficult for a business to make money and operate.

None of this has fazed BookTok or the library network in recent years, however. They’ve been largely silent about Amazon’s business practices

What’s changed, according to an inside source among librarians, is that Jeff Bezos refused to endorse Kamala Harris for President this election cycle through his news outlet the Washington Post, and now, angry liberal women are trying to attack Amazon for not being as politically active as they have been in years past.

According to Fandom Pulse sources, librarians are urging people to cancel their Amazon Prime and Kindle Unlimited subscriptions over the election. While several authors we’ve spoken with have said they’ve noticed no drop in sales because of this, it’s also something that’s been prevalent among the growing BookTok community in recent days.

Several authors voiced opinions anonymously that this would hurt their businesses and say they’ve cautioned readers not to do this. A result has been that some activsts are agreeing to boycott “parts of the store,” according to one author.

Several BookTok influencers, who are book readers and authors who post videos on the book industry or book-related topics to TikTok, have called for a boycott of Amazon because of the election of Donald Trump.

One BookTok activist, idesofmarge, who says she’s a romance writer, did a whole video signaling about canceling her subscription where she admits that indie writers could be hurt by people making these moves, though she’s doing what she can anyway. “As you probably heard, boycotting completely is going to punish indie authors more than anybody, so a complete boycott from prime to XYZ is wholly impossible if you wanna keep supporting indie authors.

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While she is right in the video talking about Kindle Unlimited being something that loses authors money compared to normal practices, the motivations behind why BookTok is trying to boycott Amazon is something wholly different.

Another TikTok activist who goes by the sustainabletravelpod used the situation to try to urge people to quit Amazon over environmental reasons. “Buy second hand,” she said in her caption while lecturing people on the company.

More authors on BookTok have been becoming activists as well with _alyssaslibrary_ going full out to tell people to not support certain authors because of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She opens a video,“Authors that you should not support anymore because they don’t support Palestine.”

While several in BookTok and in libraries seem intent on torpedoing independent authors’ businesses over politics, others are seeing this is as a ridiculous effort.

Fandom Pulse reached out to booktokker and Fandom Pulse contributor Dauphine Alpine to learn if she would be taking part in the Bezos boycott. "I will not," she said. When asked her opinion of the boycotter, she replied: "It's stupid. What do politics have to do with
loving books?"

Author Robert Peecher who makes his living on Amazon selling his thrilling western novels like Along The Restless Trail, told Fandom Pulse this, “It always confounds me to see independent authors and readers target Amazon for boycotts or vitriol. I think Amazon has created a significant shift in the world of reading and writing. Maybe not quite on the level of the Gutenberg Press, but maybe not very far off, either. I’ve said many times that I wouldn’t have a career as an author if not for Jeff Bezos and Amazon.”

He continued, “The stories I tell just aren’t a big enough blip on the radar for traditional publishers to take an interest (even though 40 years ago books similar to the ones I write were among the most widely read in the world). Especially for authors, Amazon opened up opportunities that never existed before the early 2000s. It gave authors like me an opportunity to publish books and build a career that I probably would never have had were it not for Amazon.”

“I don’t have to write books that appeal to the gatekeepers at traditional publishing houses or books that align with current trends or what forecasters think will be popular. I can write the books that I want, the books that inspire and entertain me, and find an audience and earn a living doing this thing that gives me and my readers tremendous pleasure. From a reader’s perspective, Amazon dramatically lowered the cost of reading as a hobby and created options for readers to discover new writers and find novels suited to their tastes. I also appreciate the direct connection Amazon allows between authors and readers.”

He concluded, “I daily converse with readers who feel that connection with me, and I think that’s a dynamic that didn’t exist prior to Amazon. Can you imagine chatting on Facebook with Hemingway or O’Connery? But Amazon creates a platform where that bond between author and reader is tighter than it’s ever been before. From my perspective, for the vast majority of independent authors and readers, Amazon has been a win. Even for authors who aren’t enrolled in Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program. Amazon has exposed readers to a new way of finding authors who just 20 years ago would have been undiscoverable.”

The consensus among authors we spoke with seems to be much in line with Peecher’s thinking on the topic. While Librarians and BookTok don’t necessarily need to make their livings off of the Amazon ecosystem, most independent authors do at this point, which makes this effort something that is much more of a virtue signal than anything even helping a political cause.

Amazon doesn’t make most of its money off of its book sales regardless, engaged in countless other services which include government contracts for their web and data systems. Independent authors, however, are reliant on this service for the time being.

What do you think of Librarians and BookTok calling for an Amazon boycott over the election? Leave a comment and let us know!

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