OUR BOOKS
ARP Books to discontinue books through Amazon.com Inc.
By ARP Staff
Dear readers, colleagues, and supporters,
ARP Books has decided to discontinue selling our books through Amazon.com Inc.
Our mission is to amplify writing from the left; we focus on labour, social and economic justice, and progressive politics, with particular attention to innovative and experimental approaches to scholarly, trade non-fiction, and literary writing. Our books reflect a commitment to political and social transformation and workers’ rights, including social and economic justice for Indigenous, Black, and people of colour.
Continuing to do business with Amazon is antithetical to these values.
Deemed one of the most dangerous places to work by the United States Occupational Health and Safety Administration, Amazon’s collaborations with federal law enforcement, its anti-labour actions, its blatant disregard for the lives of its labour force, including workers who are 25 per cent Black and over 65 per cent Black, Indigenous, and people of colour, its unsustainable delivery model, and its gross profiteering, motivate our decision.
This decision is also bolstered by a shift that is already taking place. Increasingly, and throughout the COVID-19 crisis we have seen more ethical models of getting books to readers redeveloping—readers buying from local independent Canadian bookstores, independent online retailers, and from book publishers directly.
It is the reading public that is driving this change and we encourage anyone who is looking to purchase our books to do so through local independent booksellers or online options that are not Amazon.
If you live somewhere in Canada that doesn’t have a local independent bookseller, you can purchase books from online retailers such as alllitup.ca and 49thShelf.com. In the United States bookshop.org and indiebound.org are excellent alternatives, allowing readers to search for their closest independent bookstore by using their zip code.
We’ve heard from so many of our authors and we are thankful and heartened to have received so much support and encouragement regarding this decision.
We do not believe that we will be the only book publisher who will reach this conclusion and stop doing business with Amazon. We feel strongly that a new model of book publishing can and should cut out profiteers and refocus on more ethical means towards the dissemination of ideas.
Thank you for your support.
In solidarity,
The Owners and Staff,
ARP Books