Economic blackouts hurt indie authors, not Amazon

The economic blackout on big corporations sounds like a good idea, right? It’ll get them to sit up and take notice, hit them where they live – in their wallets, and push them to change their practices.

Except it won’t.

Boycotts tend to work only if they’re targeted, and the record of success even in those cases is limited.  As Koen Pauwels, professor of marketing at Northeastern University, put it: “For a boycott to be really effective, you… have to be very specific in your demands, so it should be something that the organization you’re boycotting can actually do.”

There aren’t any demands to this economic blackout that I can see. People just seem to be trying to hurt the big corporations.

But Amazon, Walmart, Target, and others aren’t the ones that will be hurt. Instead, the economic blackout will cause the most damage to the people being exploited by those corporations: people of limited means. They’re the ones that shop at Walmart and Amazon because they can find what they’re looking for at more reasonable prices there than elsewhere. If the boycott did succeed (it won’t), those without the means to pay higher prices will be forced to go without things – sometimes essentials like food and gasoline. Those are products typically sold by large corporations, too.

I saw one person who was dedicated to the boycott idea confess to buying gas because she wouldn’t have gotten to work otherwise.

Then there are folks like myself, independent authors who publish through Amazon because it is, bar none, the biggest book sales platform out there. The vast, vast majority of indie authors are already scraping to get by. Now we’re being punished, in many cases, by people whom we agree with politically. It’s bad enough the right wants to raise prices with tariffs and corporate subsidies; now we’re being squeezed further by people with good intentions who haven’t thought through the ramifications of this boycott.

Amazon’s pockets are easily deep enough to absorb any economic hit it takes from a one-day or one-week blackout; our pockets aren’t. We’re already fighting for every dollar we earn. And if the boycott is extended to a week, with further actions planned down the road, we’re the ones who will suffer, not Jeff Bezos.

Indie authors who publish on Amazon perform a service that far more than offsets any action taken in a boycott: We preserve history, provide how-tos, entertain, and inspire people. My wife knows at least two indie authors who planned book launches for the day of the boycott before the boycott was announced. Their big day is being ruined. Is Jeff Bezos’? I seriously doubt it.

This is not to mention the fact that boycotts like this are less effective in a polarized society with hardened positions. So even if a boycott/blackout did manage to chip away something from the big corporations’ bottom line, it would be less likely to change its policies than in the past. Again, this blackout carries no specific demand for a policy change, and even if it did, it probably would not matter.

In January 2025, Target announced that it would scale back its Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs amid slowing sales attributed to opponents of DEI policies. This, of course, sparked threats of a boycott by those in favor of DEI. So what are we left with? Dueling boycotts in a country about evenly divided: If one side boycotts something, the other side takes up the slack by supporting the companies being boycotted.

And if you’re not buying gas today, you’ll still need it tomorrow, which means you’ll be having zero net impact on big oil.

So what’s the point of all this? If you’re easily offended, stop reading now, because I’m about to get blunt.

The most common refrain I’ve heard is that people want to feel like they’re doing something. They think they’re powerless, and many of them want to feel like they have power, even if that power is only “symbolic.” They want to feel relevant by “making a statement.” Hey, I get that: indie authors struggle with powerlessness all the time as we fight tooth and nail for each sale. But that doesn’t mean we should do stupid things, like trying vanity publishing, to feel better about ourselves. We need to keep searching for a formula that actually works.

Making a statement is pointless unless people are listening, and half the country has already closed its ears, so most of this is just preaching to the choir. What’s needed isn’t another “statement,” it’s action that actually works. Rather than attacking big corporations, why not empower the little guy who’s getting screwed? Make a difference where you can instead of tugging on Superman’s cape and spitting into the wind. Superman will just turn around and slug you.

The poor people who are most hurt by big corporations aren’t driving this boycott. Middle-class and wealthy people who can afford to “make a statement” without getting screwed themselves are. Why do you think so many poor people voted for Trump in the first place? It’s because they felt, rightly or wrongly, that the left wasn’t addressing their needs. Instead of working to lift them up, as Martin Luther King did, for example, they’re busy trying to tear their enemies down. That’s how war works. The generals call the shots, and the little guy gets sent to the front lines to get killed.

I don’t want to get killed, and I don’t want my fellow authors to get killed either. So rather than engaging in this boycott, I’m working to lift them up so they can have real power, rather than tilting at windmills and getting shredded by the blades.

Stephen H. Provost is the author of more than 50 books and an advocate for independent authors