When did you start buying? I lived in a small town (roughly 40,000 people) and in 1981 I could buy Lance A. Leventhal's "6809 Assembly Language Programming" on order in less than a week. The 6502 version was in stock.
The problem is that chain bookstores emerged right around this point in the local malls (Waldenbooks, for my local area) and killed the local bookstores.
So, in my town, the local bookstore, right off the downtown park, went under in favor of the chain store in the local mall--neither of which now exist. So, now the damage can't be undone without a significant investment by somebody, but the upside profit is limited by whether Amazon is willing to undercut you.
Don't get me wrong. I loathe most local businesses in small towns. It used to be that they were slow, but they were reliable. If they said it would be done on date X two weeks out, it would be done on date X or they would start moving heaven and earth. Now, they tend to be slow and unreliable. The last car repair I had to deal with was: "Well, it didn't come in the shipment. It will be another week." "Um, no. Get the part tomorrow." "Not gonna happen." "Actually, yes, the part will be here tomorrow because I'm having it FedEx'd in. And me, my lawyer, your manager, the dealership owner, and GM are going to have a conference call while you are fixing the car you've already had for a week." Those kinds of businesses should go under post haste.
Nevertheless, there are some local businesses that get it and do a great job serving the local area. They don't deserve to get wiped out because WalMart, Amazon, etc. can force things that the smaller businesses cannot.
They do compete with Amazon, of course, but not nearly as directly as they do with Borders and Barnes & Noble. Borders is gone and B&N is closing stores, which means better times for the indy shops.
Funny how you can actually compete when your biggest competitor loses its 5-8% retail cost advantage.
Amazon pays taxes in every state where it has a presence, and doesn't in states where it doesn't. Just like every business (and individual) since, well, ever.
It will be interesting to see how the theory that you're obliged to obey all the laws of every state plays out when it's applied on a more general level. You're okay with that, I guess?
Um, you do realize that this has also been ILLEGAL forever, right?
You, as an individual, are supposed to pay sales tax on your purchases. Period. That is the law.
The fact that the appearance of Amazon allowed millions of people to break that law when the local businesses could not is why the states went after Amazon directly.
Would you much rather that we start convicting people for not paying sales tax? This is the alternative.
Amazon offering zillions of books in stock is disruption. Amazon offering overnight delivery is disruption.
Amazon enabling millions of people to dodge their sales tax isn't disruption--it's called being a jerk.
Um, no it isn't.
"You, as an individual, are supposed to pay sales tax on your purchases."
You, as an individual, are an entirely different entity from Amazon, which is a company located in another state.
"Would you much rather that we start convicting people for not paying sales tax?"
Sure I would. Why are you advocating that the burden be put on the entity that isn't breaking the law rather than the one that is? Why are you advocating that states be able to place the burden of enforcing their local laws on an entity located in another state?
"Amazon enabling millions of people to dodge their sales tax isn't disruption"
Amazon isn't the first company to sell stuff by mail order, dude. The Sears Catalog first came out in the 19th century.
And yes, high-tax states whined about it back then, too.
AbeBooks: http://www.abebooks.com/docs/BooksellerPolicies/4.shtml does not collect sales tax.
Apple did not collect sales tax until they started opening Apple Stores in other states.
I buy practically everything online, mostly from Amazon.
Certainly, but having small local bookshops doesn't preclude also having Amazon.
I've lived much of my life in small towns in the US, and honestly, the single best thing about Amazon is that it massively increased my access to books. Small-town bookstores never carried more than a handful of programming books, a couple of short shelves of science fiction, and none of the strange specialist material I buy today (books on purely functional data structures, bilingual French/hieroglyphic texts, and so on—everybody wants something out on the long tail, but the details obviously vary).
Right now, my least favorite thing about the French book market is the near-impossibility of buying French-language ebooks from overseas, assuming I want more than Le Petit Prince or a bunch of public domain classics. The only French publishing niche that has this figured out is long-form comics (aka bandes dessinées). There, the publishers banded together to create the massively awesome online distributor Izneo, which sucks up more of my book budget than I'd care to admit, and which allows me to buy from anywhere in the world: http://www.izneo.com/
On the other hand, the French tradition of aggressive law-making means that they can actually decide to create a 4-year startup visa, then go ahead and actually do it.