Does the Library of Congress purchase books from Amazon.com?
The Library of Congress is special. They get a copy of every book published in the US. At least, they get every book submitted to the US Copyright Office for official copyrights. So they don’t have to buy them. And they’re not a lending library, so they only need a single copy for the stacks. In fact, they can’t keep everything they’re sent, so they donate much of it to schools and other libraries. They will sometimes buy rare books that they want to have in their collection, but such things come from auctions or private sales, not Amazon.
