Week 12 - The Long Tail. I couldn't come up with a more creative title that didn't seem dirty or immature or somehow related to genitalia.

Considering that I get 95 percent of my music and movies for free from the internet, I'll expound upon the long tail in terms of my book buying. As a snobbish reader, I typically avoid the best-sellers list. Like, yeah that's nice that you liked that book but you're probably stupid and have bad taste (while I sometimes think that way, it's by no means how I actually feel about people who read best-selling books. In fact, I know many intelligent people with good taste whose home libraries consist almost entirely of best-selling books. What it has more to do with is my innate desire to be different and unique, even if it means pitting myself against really quite nice and rather smart people who happen to enjoy popular mainstream fiction).

So I dig deeper. Let's say I find an author I like. There was a time where I was playing a lot of pool and smoking a lot of cigarettes and listening to a lot of Tom Waits. Someone mentioned Charles Bukowski as a sort of literary equivalent of what Waits had done with music. I went to the old Brick and Mortar book store down the street, found a copy of one of his better known works, Ham On Rye, and resentfully paid full price for it. Resentful because I knew I could go home, look on Amazon and get it used for a buck and shipped for four and that guy at the book store seemed jaded and kind of like he didn't even like me. Ham On Rye was the last Bukowski title I could find in the greater Burlington area, so it wasn't long until I was on Amazon.

Now, I will say that I get certain twinges of guilt any time I buy anything from Amazon. I'm left with a dirty feeling, not unlike how I feel once I've left Wal-Mart. That sense that every penny I spend there is another nail in the already almost sealed coffin of the Mom and Pop Stores of America that can't compete with Amazon's pricing and inventory, and often times end up employing jaded and resentful cashiers whose subsequent disposition I'm in some part responsible for. Anyway, there must have been six or seven of his books I found. All used, all under five bucks.

Then, after crushing Bukowski's canon, I went after one of his biggest influences, John Fante, who, apparently, has less hipster acclaim and isn't counter-culturally influential enough for shelf space in the two bookstores in town. Amazon flexed it's long tail again. I found and bought probably five books in all. Some were more obscure and I may have paid 12 dollars for one but it didn't seem so bad considering of all the other deals I was getting away with. The further down the rabbit hole I went, the more obscure the books got. Apparently, Fante was obsessed with this book called Hunger written in the 1800's buy a Norwegian guy named Knut Hamsun. Of course, Amazon had it, and my local book store didn't. It was used and cost less than a sandwich, even though it kind of smelled like one. Once I figured out when to order new books so they came right around when I finished another, it was like I didn't even have to wait. Not to mention how easy Amazon makes it to impulsively buy whatever you want by saving your credit card and shipping information, pummeling the physical American Book Store just a little bit further into the ground with every click.

I guess you can't blame Amazon. Looking specifically at the sale of books, the tail is just too long to be contained to a storefront on Church Street. Maybe I'm still miffed about the snarky store owner who looked like he just smelled a fart when he rang me out. Mind you, I didn't fart.