Books, bookstores and your opinion

Hey y'all -- hope you're not so busy eating Easter goodies that you miss reading my blog this week. For the next few days I'm going to be reviewing some marvelous picture books and chapter books that we've been enjoying these past few weeks.

But I wanted to explain something first:

If you notice, my "book store" is now affiliated with Tattered Cover Book Store, an independent book shop here in Colorado. This is a book shop that carries tons of wonderful books that you can mail-order. So, when you request a book that I've mentioned here, I get a small (certainly wouldn't keep me in books long) commission, but more importantly, you'll be supporting independent booksellers!

Don't get me wrong, I love Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble and some of the other biggies. But, I think there also comes a time to make a stand -- if we have only the biggies and none of the independents, I think we lose a BIG piece of what's made this country great for the past 250 years or so.

Today dh had the day off so we visited the Ben Franklin Exhibit. When I come away from this wonderful exhibit, which does a fantastic job of chronicling this man's amazing talents, I have a strong sense of what the individual can do in regard to making things better for all. Franklin's focus was on social betterment -- free libraries, college/university education, volunteer fire departments, volunteer militia, etc -- and he would be unimpressed with the colonies 250 years later. Now we have mega-companies that have pushed out the little guys; companies that are so large, it's very hard to be an independent.

From now on, when I recommend a book, I will be linking to the book at the Tattered Cover site. If I recommend something that Tattered Cover doesn't have, I'll link to Amazon or Barnes & Nobles.

But what's your opinion -- is it worth it to buy from the independents (paying maybe up to 20% more per book) but knowing that you're helping keep independents from being swallowed by the big guys? Would you rather I continued to link to Amazon? What's your opinion?