The cover of Bloomberg Businessweek for the week of Jan. 30-Feb. 5.BizweekdesignThe cover of Bloomberg Businessweek for the week of Jan. 30-Feb. 5.

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever,” George Orwell wrote in “Nineteen Eighty-Four.” In “Animal Farm,” he concluded that revolutions are inevitably betrayed by their leaders. His novel “Burmese Days” ends with the hero killing himself because he is unfit to live in this sour world. He shoots his dog too.

As a rule, modern civilization disappointed Orwell when it did not actually sicken him. But in at least one respect he was way too optimistic. Bookselling, he wrote in Fortnightly in November 1936, “is a humane trade which is not capable of being vulgarized beyond a certain point. The combines can never squeeze the small independent bookseller out of existence as they have squeezed the grocer and the milkman.”

Jump forward three-quarters of a century, and a certain Seattle-based combine is being accused of exactly that. All sorts of merchants, but particularly booksellers, were infuriated by Amazon’s effort before the holidays to use shops on Main Street and in malls as showrooms for people to check out items before ordering them more cheaply online. The retailer’s refusal to collect sales tax is a persistent grievance. Independent booksellers have even been forced into the novel position of hoping that their one-time foe, Barnes & Noble, survives so that it can serve as a bulwark against Amazon. Publishers, if anything, are more fearful than booksellers.

Now take a look at the cover of Bloomberg Businessweek two weeks ago. It shows a book in flames with the headline, “Amazon wants to burn the book business.” What was remarkable was not just the overt Nazi iconography but the fact that it did not cause any particular uproar. In the struggle over the future of intellectual commerce in the United States, apparently even evocations of Joseph Goebbels and the Brown Shirts are considered fair game.

From Amazon’s point of view, the cover is incorrect even if you disregard any Nazi connotations. What would be the use to Amazon of a charred hulk? It does not want to destroy the book business, but simply to reinvent it — or, as its opponents would have it, seize control of it. (Amazon declined to comment.)

Nancy Pearl, who has done as much to promote reading as anyone this side of Oprah, has been caught in the crossfire here. Ms. Pearl is the Seattle librarian who popularized the notion of having everyone in a city read the same book at the same time. Her “Book Lust” series of volumes  recommended thousands of titles. She was Library Journal’s Librarian of the Year in 2011. A superhero action figure was created in her likeness, and a tribute band named after her.

There are some books that Ms. Pearl wants people to read that are not in print. Her agent, Victoria Sanders, shopped a rediscovery line to 20 publishers. None were interested. Last month Amazon made a deal with her. And that’s when the furor started. The Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, which just gave Ms. Pearl its lifetime achievement award, described the reaction among its members as “consternation.” In Seattle, it was front-page news. “Betrayal” was a word that got used a lot.

Was Amazon sincerely trying to rescue lost classics or was it cynically buying a local hero’s endorsement to cover up its aggressive tactics? A month later, the debate is unresolved.

Ms. Pearl still seems a little shaken by the intensity of the response. “I knew the minute I signed the contract that there would be people who would not be happy, but the vehemence surprised me,” she said. To protect herself, she did not read Facebook or Twitter or any of the social media sites. (One Twitter post: “I might have to burn that superhero doll”).

The amount of money involved here is not enough to fill a tin cup. But for some Amazon opponents, that just means it got Ms. Pearl’s credibility for cheap.

“It’s like hearing a favorite old song used on a car commercial,” wrote J.B. Dickey of the Seattle Mystery Bookshop on his blog. “You can never listen to it the same again. It’s no longer just a great song — it’s been reduced to a jingle.”

Ms. Pearl, at one point an independent bookseller herself, is trying to bridge a gap that might be unbridgeable. “I understand and sympathize with the concerns about Amazon’s role in the world of books,” she said. “If I had to do this deal all over again … well, it’s a hard question. But I would still want these books back in print.”

The first one, Merle Miller’s “A Gay and Melancholy Sound,” will be out in April. Interested readers will probably have to go to Amazon to get it, because I doubt many independents will carry it.
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