Amazon scrutinizes literary system

The digital era has led to a market in which a few big companies run the show. One of those companies is Amazon. In less than twenty years Amazon became the world’s biggest online retailer. In the US a third of all books are sold via Amazon. Spiderman’s uncle Ben said once: ‘With great power comes great responsibility.’ Uncle Ben died because of Spiderman’s lack of responsibility. And now literature is about to die due to Amazon’s method.

It’s Amazon’s process that scrutinizes the literary system. The literary system I am talking about is defined by Bourdieu (1993). Bourdieu developed the idea of a literary field which is the collection of literary institutions, organisations and actors, involved in the material and symbolic production of literature. In this field actors are struggling for the most dominant position. Literariness is subjected to books by other important actors in the field. ‘Choices made in the selection and classification of books are socially constructed. Though many critics would like us to believe in their abilities to classify authors with nothing more than the texts at hand, they perform their job in a social context.’ (Verboord 2003). Amazon knocks down the system by eliminating two important organizations in the field.

Bookshops used to have symbolic value. Which refers to the value that others grant to a player in the field. A bookshop could earn symbolic value for instance by the books it sold (good books – bad books) and by the seller’s knowledge (lots of literary knowledge results in good advice and happy costumers). Amazon tries to get all the possible books. It makes no difference between good or bad literature. It sells anything. People don’t know if a book is good. They’ll buy the one that is the most visible on the website (which is usually a potential bestseller). The other important players are publishers. Amazon asks high discounts in order to sell publisher’s books. This ensures publishers to produce books that sell good because else they won’t gain any profit. It’s unnecessary to say that well selling books aren’t the best books (remember Fifty shades).

Amazon can do those things because it’s so incredibly large and powerful. I guess it’s okay if Amazon uses the principle of supply and demand in other fields, like photo camera’s, but literature can’t be like that. Literature has to make people think about life. People can’t think well if they read bad books. It’s clear that Amazon can’t handle the responsibility of selling literature. So it shouldn’t get the power. If we don’t do anything now, Amazon’s power will grow bigger and we will lose literature.

 

Bourdieu, P. The field of cultural production: essays on art and literature. Columbia: University Press, 1993.
Verboord, M. ‘Classification of authors by literary prestige.’ In: Poetics: Journal of Empirical Research on Culture, the Media and the Arts 31 (2003): 259-281. Via: http://ics.uda.ub.rug.nl/FILES/root/Articles/2003/VerboordM-Classif/VerboordM-Classification-2003.pdf