IG: @rihonri

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the black men: i beg u excuse me

(Read this report from the Institute for Self-Reliance if you really want to get into how they’re hurting the economy.)

They’re so omnipotent at this point that they’ve normalized the discounted prices for books as the standard. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had someone come up to me and tell me what the price on Amazon is, expecting me to match it. The number of times I’ve been told, “Oh, it’s cheaper on Amazon, I’ll just get it there.” Even at author events, where book sales DIRECTLY CONTRIBUTE to whether or not that bookstore will be able to get more authors in.

So when you go into a bookstore, and you’re asked to pay $27 for a hardcover, remember: THAT IS THE COVER PRICE. Set by the publishers. The bookstore is not upcharging you. They are asking you to pay the value of the book. Amazon’s low prices come with a cost. Please, just keep that in mind. 

The cost of the book is the advance for the author, it’s the salaries for all the people who work on it (including editors, yes, but also designers and marketers and publicists and lawyers and accountants and everyone else who makes sure publishing works). It’s the cost of printing the books and the materials to print those books on and the warehouses to store those books in. It’s keeping the literal lights on.

Amazon routinely sells books at or *below* wholesale cost. Meaning that when you ask a bookstore to ‘price match’ Amazon, you’re literally asking them to give you the book for free, or even take a financial loss on it. 

‘So how can Amazon do it?’ you ask? The answer is Amazon does not care about losing money. It sells goods at a loss continuously. (Don’t believe me? Just search “Amazon quarterly losses” and you can find article after article about this) Why? Because its goal isn’t to sell the most things, it’s goal is to be the only place where you CAN buy things. They gouge prices on goods to a point where brick and mortar retailers absolutely cannot compete and they do it with the singular goal of eliminating competition.

Things have value. They represent many people’s time and labor. For books, specifically, they represent tremendous cultural worth that extends far beyond the value of the paper they’re printed on. We have to appreciate the value of goods and be willing to pay a fair price that will support and nurture industries. 

Fuck wit me: https://www.onyxstickers.com/products

The Wood Sticker version is coming very soon. I tried to print this version on wood but it wouldn’t come out right, had to be completely re-done with other specifications. 

If we destroyed the colony to harvest honey there would be no bees for next year, and beekeepers are incredibly careful to keep their bees healthy and thriving. We take *excess* honey that they don’t need, and it stops the hive from becoming honey-bound, meaning that there’s so much honey the Queen has nowhere to lay eggs. And if the winter is harsher than expected and the remaining honey store runs low, we feed the bees plenty to make sure they survive. We also make sure that pests are controlled, bees are treated for disease, and the hive is weatherproof and in good repair, all things that wild bees struggle with.

Keeping bees in properly managed hives where they don’t starve or die from preventable disease is much better for them than being left to fend for themselves, and they’re far too important to be left alone.

All the fruits and vegetables that vegans *do* eat couldn’t exist without bees, and the hives which pollinate those crops also produce excess honey which the beekeepers can sell to help keep themselves and their hives going.