Dear tumblr friends,
I’m very sad to let you know that I’m leaving the bookmongery—and, sadder still, this tumblr. It’s been fun, tumblring the things with you—jokes about Moby-Dick, Salivagate, Funbruary and Funch, answering questions about what books to get your dads, the great American Sad Keith Gessen discount, liking all your guys’s stuff.
It’s been a weird last couple weeks for bookselling: Google soon won’t let us sell their ebooks, the DoJ gave Amazon a colossal tugjob, and nobody won the Pulitzer The Great Night won the McNallitzer. So, one last time: Amazon is an ugly corporation hellbent on profit alone, and anything they say they’re doing “in the interest of the consumer” is really only in the interest of itself: slowly choking publishing and bookstores to death so it can keep track of all your reading and buying habits. Books cost a certain amount of money when they’re not loss leaders in a monopsonized, bullied market.
But you know that. If working at McNally Jackson has taught me anything, it’s that people—you guys—still care, and care deeply, about books. And the internet is helping, not hurting, that.
Though I’m sad to leave the store, I head happily to Norton to become an editorial and digital marketing assistant, working under the great Matt Weiland and the great Steve Colca. Next week is my last week, and after that the tumblr will be in the very capable, very hilarious hands of Dustin. Anyway, onward!
