September 22, 2011 Liz Garrigan’s Dear John letter to Amazon in today’s edition of Chapter 16 is an unvarnished call for book lovers to put their money where their mouths are and support their local bookstores instead of buying books online. Garrigan argues that Amazon’s refusal to collect the state and local sales taxes that other bricks-and-mortar stores collect–taxes that support local schools, police and fire departments, and other civic necessities–amounts to a “powerful incentive for customers to let their fingers do the clicking.”
A new analysis of a study by the University of Tennessee contends that the loss of tax revenue from online retailers will cost the state as much as $3 billion in revenue and the loss of over 10,000 jobs over the next five years.
Read an explanation of the new study in the Chattanooga Times Free Press, here. Read Garrigan’s essay, “It’s Not Me, It’s You,” here.
For more updates on Tennessee authors, please visit Chapter 16’s News & Notes page, here.
Tagged: Children & YA, Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry
