Tag: community discourse

Where to Buy Books Other than Amazon

Jess MahlerLeave a comment

A few years back I had a habit of every six months or so doing a thread on Fedi about options for getting books other than Amazon. Eventually it finally occurred to me that I could write it once, put it up on website, and update as needed, rather than constantly reinventing the wheel.

Here’s the updated version for the new site.

Couple of notes before we get started:

This is geared towards US book sellers. I just don’t know much about book sellers in other countries. If you know any others please leave them in the comments.

Many folks aren’t aware that Goodreads is owned by Amazon (as, of course, is Audible, and anything with ‘Kindle’ in the branding). The focus here is ebooks, but we’ll also talk a bit about audio books, Goodreads alternatives, and anything else I can squeeze in.

Ebooks:

Authors website — some authors have a webstore where you can buy their books. Bonus: Author gets more money

Publishers website — ditto, without the bonus

Smashwords — support indie authors!

Your Local Bookstore — some indie book stores have ebook sales. (Don’t know any local book stores? Find one on Indie Bound)

Someone’s Local Bookstore — if your local book store doesn’t, you can find a list of other local book stores that do through Indiebound (downside, must use the My Must Reads app)

DriveThruFiction — lots of indie and oddball stuff

Kobo — will give a percentage to your local book store (or someone else’s local bookstore) downside: DRM-locked books can only be read in app or the Kobo e-reader, some books now readable in browser

Google books — yeah, it’s Google. But when it comes to books, google is the lesser of two evils. Many of the same problems as Kobo, but all DRM-locked books can be read in browser

Avoid

Barnes & Noble — their DRM thing won’t let you read your books if you don’t have an active credit card on file

Amazon (of course)

Pulp Books:

Your Local Bookstore

Authors website — some authors have a webstore where you can buy their books. Bonus: Author gets more money

Publishers website — ditto, without the bonus

Someone’s Local Bookstore — Book Bound will let you pick a local store to shop from

Thrift Books — great for used books of all types

Avoid

ABEBooks (It’s owned by Amazon)

Amazon (of course)

Walmart (it’s Walmart)

Audio Books

Librevox — free audio versions of books in the public domain

Libro.fm — subscription service similar to Audible, but you can download actual MP3 files

Chirp — really good sales

Avoid

Audible (owned by Amazon)

KU Alternatives

Everand — monthly subscription to thousands of ebooks, audio books, magazines, and more. BONUS! Many KU ebooks are available on Everand as audiobooks so you can leave KU and still read stuff from some of your fave authors.

Your Local Library — Go old fashioned! Paper books, ebooks, and audio books for free!

Kobo Plus

24Symbols

Goodreads Alternatives

(Yeah, Amazon owns Goodreads)

Storygraph

Bookwyrm

LibraryThing (better for institutions than individuals, but some folks make it work)

Where I Buy Books

My book buying priorities are:

I want DRM free ebooks in .epub format

I want the author to be paid as much as possible

So the first place I look is on the authors website.

Many authors have their on webstores these days. Those webstores almost always offer DRM free epub, and if I’m buying from the website I know that the ‘retailers cut’ on an sale is ALSO going to the author.

My next stop is the publishers webstore (if there is a publisher who has a webstore. Most of them don’t, but a few do.)

If neither the author nor publisher have a webstore, my next stops (in order) are:

Smashwords

Google Books

Kobo

Used bookstores for paper copies

I prefer to buy ebooks because they are cheaper and I’m less likely to lose them if my family becomes homeless again. The cheaper is not the biggest factor these days, which is why used bookstore is the last spot on the list. Authors don’t get a percentage when I buy used books, and I want them to get paid. So even though used books are cheaper than ebooks, I go for ebooks first.

I also have an Everand account and (of course) Overdrive through my library.

Community Suggestions

Stuff other folks have suggested that will be added to the main article in the next update:

Bookshop.org

Waterstones – UK

Blackwell’s – UK w/ international shipping

Better World Books – Used

eBay – Used

Pluto Press – UK

Kenny’s Bookshop — Ireland

Standard Ebooks — public domain ebooks

Project Gutenberg — public domain ebooks

Alibris — US and UK with international shipping

Pushing Back on Chrononormativity — personal reflections

Jess MahlerLeave a comment

I learned the word ‘Chrononormativity’ from the third chapter of Sherronda J Brown’s Refusing Compulsory Sexuality. (it’s a really good read, you should check it out.) In RCS, Brown discusses how asexuality, by merely existing, stands outside of chrononormativitiy. I’d never heard the word chrononormativity before, but I instantly understood it. I’ve been fighting against it for most of my life.

“First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes baby in the baby carriage.”

My first conscious run-in with chronormativity was when I embraced polyamory. We called it ‘the relationship escalator’. The idea that relationships are expected to follow a specific pattern — a specific chronology. The pattern typically goes something like:

  1. date
  2. become exclusive
  3. get engaged
  4. get married
  5. have babies
  6. live together until one of you dies

Any relationship that doesn’t complete this chronology is considered failed. Any relationship which doesn’t follow the correct order or rejects a step entirely is ‘doing it wrong’ at best, and often considered unethical and immoral. In some places and situations it can be illegal.

In embracing polyamory, I automatically rejected the ‘become exclusive’ step, and I also made the choice to reject the ‘get married’ step. I refused to privilege one relationship over another that way.

Of course, chrononormativity, like all normativity, has a great deal of societal pressure behind it. In this case, I was at one point ‘forced’ to get married in order to have access to health insurance and health care.

The Sabbath

It’s always struck me as somewhat ironic, how much of the world is structured around a five day work week, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5. But then for so much of my ‘working’ life, I’ve been put in a position of ‘work Saturdays or you don’t get/lose the job’. But it’s not just work. There’s a local hiking group on MeetUp I’ve thought about joining more than once, but they only go out on Saturdays.

I could spend a very long time listing out the ways keeping Sabbath has conflicted with the expectations of our world. (And don’t get me started on the frustrations of having our holiday season overlap with the very start of the school year!)

Good Night, Sleep Tight!

The kid refused to go to sleep. We tried everything. Reading together, taking away screens, no water or food right before bed. Nothing worked. Eventually, we broke down and tried medication. Because they ‘had’ to go to sleep at night and they ‘had’ to be awake before 8 in the morning, and it didn’t matter if they were getting enough sleep, because they weren’t getting the right sleep.

And I would have told the doctors to fuck off except the kid was getting ready to start school, when they would be forced to get up before 8 whether they’d gotten to sleep on time or not.

For better or worse, the medication didn’t work either.

We homeschool now. For better or worse. And the kid sleeps when they need to and gets up when they need to. And it feels like I constantly need to deal with well meaning busy-bodies who want to know why I ‘let’ my kid stay up so late and don’t enforce a ‘healthy’ bed time.

Because it isn’t healthy for them, that’s why. Now fuck off.

Not many years later, I had my own run-in with weird sleep patterns, when I kept waking up in the middle of the night and couldn’t fall back to sleep. I was exhausted all the time, constantly running on half the sleep I needed.

Finally, I had a brain storm — why not try splitting my sleep schedule? Sleep 4 hours, be awake for 8 hours, sleep another 4 hours, etc.

It worked really well for a year or two, but god did it complicate interacting with the rest of the world!

Then for some reason I’ll never know, my body decided I was done with that, and I needed to start sleep 8 hours at a stretch again. And I learned another new thing — not only does our body’s chronology not always line up with what the world expects, it can also change on us with no warning and we just need adapt as best we can.

Except for far to many people ‘adapt as best we can’ means set that alarm clock real loud and stagger through the day on not enough sleep because our bodies needs are second in importance to being ‘productive members of society.’

That ‘productive’ is important.

Chrononormative-Fuck You

The term ‘chrononormativity’ was coined by Elizabeth Freeman in 2010 in her book ‘Time Binds: Queer Temporalities, Queer Histories’. Defined as “the use of time to organize individual human bodies toward maximum productivity,” chrononormativity finally describes and defines the force society has exerted on me for so long, dragging me into a ‘right’ pace and process for living. A pace and process determined not by what is best for me or my loved ones, but what is most productive for society.

Capitalism for the win?

I decided a long time ago that I was living life on my time and have been lucky enough (privileged enough) that I have mostly gotten away with it. But each step of the way has been a fight.

As always, fuck capitalism.

How has chrononormativity impacted your life?

bell hooks and Being a Respectful Eavesdropper

Jess MahlerLeave a comment

My biggest personal takeaway from bell hooks’ Outlaw Culture (and I emphasize /personal/ takeaway — I’ve got a LOT of political takeaways I’m still processing) is the idea of being an invited ‘eavesdropper’. I’ve long felt, reading work by hooks and Davis and other womanist thinkers, a bit uncomfortable. It was clear they weren’t speaking to me. That I, as a white person, am not part of the audience they address. It felt like I was intruding, actually. Like I didn’t belong here.

So it was almost as if hooks /was/ speaking to me — or at least, my concerns — when she said in Outlaw Culture that she is writing for a Black audience, and views white people who read who her work as eavesdroppers. Welcome ones, but eavesdroppers. (I believe this was in chapter three, during the interview with Marie-France Alderman. Unfortunately, audiobooks are difficult to cite and nearly impossible to look up a reference in.)

For the first time, I have permission to enter and engage with hooks’ work, and perhaps the work of other Black writers addressing Black audiences.

But what does it mean to be an invited eavesdropper?

What Is an Eavesdropper?

An invited eavesdropper is a very odd thing. Because eavesdropping, in its basic conception, is a violation. When hooks first referred to white readers as ‘eavesdroppers’ I had one moment of ‘Yes! That is what I’ve been feeling like’ and a second moment of ‘Oh… that’s not good, is it?’

hooks put that second thought to rest quickly enough. Probably intentionally, given her awareness of the many white people who did and do read her work. But that idea of violation still needs to be addressed. Or — not violation, but what is being violated:

Privacy.

An eavesdropper is someone who violates /privacy/, and who takes away the safety privacy creates, from the people eavesdropped on.

In saying that white readers are eavesdroppers, hooks is laying a firm boundary — we (white people) do not belong here. She chooses to allow us, but we do not belong. And our presence is a hindrance to the safety and security of the conversation she and other Black people are trying to have.

This may sound strange to white people who only know hooks as someone who has written on racism and sexism. We are used to being the audience when it comes to racism. After all, we’re the ones who /are/ racist, right?

But that’s not what hooks is about. hooks isn’t talking about white people being racist. She takes living in a white supremacist, patriarchal, capitalist society as a given (and always the three are linked for her). hooks is talking about how racism affects Black families, how Black people can respond to racism, the intersection of internalized (Black) racism and sexism, the way Black men are harmed by sexism.

Conversations that — I’ll agree with hooks — we (white people) don’t belong in. Those are intra-community conversations, /not/ inter-community. The difference is important and far too often neglected.

Still, hooks welcomes us — as eavesdroppers.

Can I Be a Respectful Eavesdropper?

I have a lot of thoughts here, but I’m having trouble finding words for them. The heading captures the main idea pretty well — if I am going to be eavesdropping on conversations not meant for me, even with invitation, how can I do it respectfully?

I don’t have a complete answer, but I’ve figured a few things out.

1) Recognize lack of context —

Because I am not hooks’ intended audience, I am missing context. Her audience is a community she is part of and she addresses her audience — other Black Americans — assuming certain knowledge, cultural context, and history that I don’t have and probably never will have.

I need to recognize this lack of context and the way it will make it harder for me to understand some of what hooks says. It will be easier for me to misunderstand or accidentally ascribe incorrect interpretations. I need to do more work to understand than the folks hooks is speaking to, and if I don’t or can’t do that work, then I need to accept that I may never understand.

2) Don’t insert myself between hooks and her audience

I have no business telling Black folks what hooks says, means, intends, etc. If they care, they can listen themselves, if they don’t care it’s not my business. If someone /asks/, that’s one thing, I can answer to the best of my ability, acknowledge where I recognize a lack of understanding, and direct them to where in hooks’ work I learned something. But it is sure as hell not my place to be going around ‘educating’ Black folks about hooks (or any other Black thinkers).

2a) What about educating other white folks?

Good question. I’m of two minds. On the one hand, educating other white folks about racism (and sexism and all the other stuff hooks talks about) is a major way we can help fight back against white supremacy. On the other hand, there’s that whole ‘lack of context’ thing and the risk of sharing wrong or misleading answers

Obviously, I’ve decided I’m okay discussing some of hooks’ work and my reaction to it, but you’ll notice I’m talking about how I engage with/respond to hooks work in one area that affects/addresses me.

I’m figuring this shit out.

3) Intra- vs inter-community

Any engagement I have with hooks work is by definition inter-community, when hooks was writing intra (within) her own community. I’ve mentioned this before. There are times and places that intra-community discussions must and should move into inter-community forums. And there are times they shouldn’t. I can assume, given hooks’ acceptance of ‘eavesdroppers’ that she anticipates and accepts her own work will end up as part of inter-community conversations.

But I think understanding the way intra- and inter-community conversations differ and the harm that can be done by carelessly dragging intra-community discussions inter-community — /especially/ the harm that can be done by an outsider doing that dragging — needs to happen before an eavesdropper has any business /responding/ to hooks writing.

Engage with it personally? Sure. Share reactions to it? Usually. Respond to it? ie, critique it? Nope. I’m nowhere near a place I can do that respectfully. And neither are the vast majority of white folks.

At Sinai – A poem

Jess MahlerLeave a comment

I stand now at Sinai:

There is no sign of Moses or God. It is dark and cold. My people have barely escaped destruction once again.

“Here! Here is your savior! The state of Israel will bring you out of bondage. You must pledge your self to it, and it will keep you and your children safe.”

Around me, people give over their gold to be melted down. My people turn their back on Sinai. They put their faith in a construct of their own hands.

It is dark and cold. The mountain is silent.

I wrote this in November of ’23, after someone told me ‘We’re Jews, we have to support Israel’. I’ve posted it on social media a time or two since then, but I think it’s time it had a permanent home.

I wonder — and fear — what that person thinks now?