But beyond the grassroots, it seems to me it’s in publishers’ interests to tackle this search/discovery problem, rather than ceding control exclusively to Amazon.

I expect they will eventually; if they were smart, they would do it cheaply and better by supporting an open project like OpenLibrary, or something similar.

Ebooks, however, is a different matter. There is room for a smart company to come in and create a real competitor to Amazon on ebooks. As Cory Doctorow has pointed out, when Amazon sells digital content, it loses what makes it a great retailer in the first place.

As an aside, some of the onus has to go on the consumer, too (and this applies to all of the information monopolies you note in the post). I liken this situation to the way food is produced and consumed in America. Very few companies control the vast majority of food that Americans eat, and the result is that Americans eat more and more of one single product (whether they realize it or not) — corn. Even though this is having adverse effects on both their bodies and their environment and weakening national security (if you think it’s scary relying on others for our energy, imagine relying on them for our food), most people don’t opt out of this system. Even if they don’t eat at fast food restaurants, they still tend to shop at major chain supermarkets or even wholesalers like Costco.

There are those of us, though, who have largely opted out of this system and support CSAs and local farmers markets, who strive to eat as much organic, locally-grown food as we can, and even, in some cases, to grow as much of our food as possible.

Where am I going with this? Well, as an independent bookstore trying to navigate ecommerce in a meaningful way, I hear from lots of people that we need to “adapt or die.” This is undoubtedly true, which is why we’ve changed much of the way we used to do business, and are constantly evaluating our policies and strategies to try to anticipate how people will find books in the future.

But then I think about how I changed the way I shop for food. About two years ago, I stopped buying food from major supermarkets and began shopping, every week, at the Hollywood Farmers Market. What did the Hollywood Farmers Market do to adapt that attracted me? They’d been around for years before I started shopping there, and I discovered it by driving by one Sunday morning. The answer is that they didn’t change, I did. I realized that it was important to get my food locally and to have access to fresh, natural food. In fact, it was so important to me that I was willing to spend a little more for that food. In some cases the quality of the food is superior, but not always. I’m more concerned with the ‘localness’ of the food than I am with whether it’s organic or not. Plus, you can buy organic food at most supermarkets now. In the end, I simply want mymoney to stay in my community and to help foster a community of farmers nearby that can provide me with delicious, nutritious food.

At some point, people are going to have to realize that shopping with somewhere other than Amazon is important. It’s our job to adapt and try to compete, but it’s the consumer’s responsibility to meet us halfway.