Since I’m not the only one out there who has a hard time buying good gifts for people I care about, I thought I’d make a suggestion in case any of you were still looking for a great gift for any of the smart awesome ladies in your life who like to read. (I hope that is all of the ladies in your life. And, obviously, these aren’t just books for ladies—I’m sure that any smart awesome dude would also like these books—I just think this would make an especially good gift for your ladies.)
Emily Books is an online, independent bookstore that sells ebooks for every format (Kindle, Nook, Iphone or whatever technology you crazy kids are using these days instead of paper books). They currently release one book a month. You can wait to see if you want the book on offer that month and buy it individually, or you can take a chance and buy a subscription with a yearly ($159) or monthly ($13.99) and you can cancel at any time. They’re off to a good start - an essay collection by Ellen Willis, Inferno by Eileen Myles (!), Glory Goes and Gets Some by Emily Carter. They host events at local bookstores.
Yes, you can buy these books online at Amazon or Barnes & Noble. Yes, it might cost a few dollars more to buy the e-version through Emily Books. But by doing so, you can push back just a little against the corporate bullies and support an independent bookstore run by two women who genuinely care about the state of the publishing world and the future of books. They even have a Tumblr.
Also, if you happened to read that infuriating (and, to my mind, poorly thought out) article by Farhad Manjoo on Slate about how buying books from Amazon rather than a bookstore is better for you, authors and the economy, please check out this point by point rebuttal from The Towering Irrelevance.
I’m not sure why almost 3,000 people follow me on Tumblr (I only really ever hear from about 15 of you) and I can only assume that the majority of these followers don’t actually read what I write….but on the off chance that maybe some of you actually do, I wanted to plug Emily Books. If they sell even 10 more books because of this post, I’d be thrilled. (Disclaimer: I don’t know either of the ladies involved in this enterprise. I just like cool books, and am always looking for ways to alleviate my guilt over not going into the Greenlight or Word more often these days.)
