Amazon's monopoly power depends on you not looking for alternatives. Here's where to look.
Independently owned shops, co-ops, and community marketplaces across the Twin Cities — every dollar spent here stays closer to home. Check out our Shop Local / Eat Local guide at https://resisttwincities.org/shop-locally/
Costco is cheaper on approximately 80% of comparable items, with household staples averaging 25% lower. A 2023 study by LendEDU of 38 items revealed that Amazon products were, on average, 56.48% more expensive than at Costco. Costco also is much better when it comes to employment practices and job benefits. And they deliver.
You may pay more at your local bookstore than if you buy from Amazon, but you also get much more – a community center, book clubs, author talks, personalized recommendations and story hours for kids. And many now now offer online shopping, with a larger selection than they carry in inventory. Check our listings of Twin Cities bookstores here. And if you can’t find what you’relooking for at your local bookstore, consider Bookshop.org , which splits sales with local bookstores.
You don’t have to buy your e-books from Amazon, and you don’t have to read them on a Kindle. Kobo, a subsidiary of the Japanese conglomerate Rakuten, offers millions of e-book titles, and a line of highly rated color and black-and-white e-book readers.
Project Gutenberg has over 75,000 e-books available to read online or download in EPUB format, and nearly 5.000 audio books. Librivox.org has over 20,000 audiobook recordings of books in the public domain, recorded by volunteers.
[Unverified suggestion — please confirm before relying on this] Bandcamp pays artists a significantly larger share than major streaming platforms.
As of 2026, the Twin Cities area has dozens of Buy Nothing chapters, with Minneapolis alone having 15 local groups and Minnesota statewide having at least 95. The St. Paul area also hosts numerous chapters, including the MacGroveland/Highland Park group, which is the state’s largest with over 4,000 members. Participation in these hyper-local Facebook groups and the Buy Nothing app allows neighbors to freely exchange goods and services without cash changing
[Unverified suggestion — please confirm before relying on this] Kanopy is free with a library card and focuses on independent and documentary film.
Most public library systems have a big selection of books, ebooks and audiobooks you can check out online for free – all you need is a library card.
There are many, many ways that shopping locally is better than shopping on Amazon:
Excerpted from Kennedy Smith’s article, It’s Time to Break Up with Amazon, published by the Institute for Local Self Reliance: Click here to read the full article.
Inside the Brutal Business Practices of Amazon—And How It Became “Too Toxic to Touch”
Friction is your friend here. If it's not one tap away, you'll actually think about the purchase.
Once you're not chasing free shipping, the whole calculation changes.
Most people default to Amazon for maybe five categories of purchase. Find the alternative for each one, once.
It won't always be one-click. That's kind of the point.
Pick one category from above and make the switch this week.