Don’t Support Your Local Bookseller

[xg4bx]

"All of which is to say that I was primed to nod in vigorous agreement when I saw novelist Richard Russo’s New York Times op-ed taking on Amazon’s thuggish ways. But as I waded into Russo’s piece—which was widely passed around on Tuesday—I realized that he’d made a critical and common mistake in his argument. Rather than focus on the ways that Amazon’s promotion would harm businesses whose demise might actually be a cause for alarm (like a big-box electronics store that hires hundreds of local residents), Russo hangs his tirade on some of the least efficient, least user-friendly, and most mistakenly mythologized local establishments you can find: independent bookstores. Russo and his novelist friends take for granted that sustaining these cultish, moldering institutions is the only way to foster a “real-life literary culture,” as writer Tom Perrotta puts it. Russo claims that Amazon, unlike the bookstore down the street, “doesn’t care about the larger bookselling universe” and has no interest in fostering “literary culture.”

That’s simply bogus. As much as I despise some of its recent tactics, no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books. With his creepy laugh and Dr. Evil smile, Bezos is an easy guy to hate, and I’ve previously worried that he’d ruin the book industry. But if you’re a novelist—not to mention a reader, a book publisher, or anyone else who cares about a vibrant book industry—you should thank him for crushing that precious indie on the corner."

http://www.slate.com/articles/techno..._button_chunky

[pidgeon92]

It's popular to demonize the successful.

[speakingtohe]

Physical bookstores are a thing of the past for me. Still I do not wish for them to go out of business. I think it is detrimental to all if a business segment disappears. Even if it does not affect the economy adversely, which it usually does, there are people who have responsibilities and expectations who are hurt severely.

Amazon is great, still I buy locally when possible.

Helen

[taosaur]

He makes some good points. How it boils down for me is, books are information; physical tomes on shelves are not the most efficient way to store or browse them.

Part of the appeal of prowling independent shops of any kind, though, is the simultaneously curated and improvisational means by which the inventory arrives on the shelves. It's especially true of second-hand stores, but you end up finding things that you never would have sought out, and that no algorithm is likely to put in front of you. The upside of inefficiency is, it allows the unplanned to happen.

[Andrew H.]

In the mid -90's, you would read the exact same complaints as Russo makes - except it was about B&N and Borders crushing the independents. And you could hear the exact same response as xg4bx makes - that for 95% of the population, there never was a nearby independent bookstore that would foster local literacy. And I have never been particularly impressed by the local bookstores I've visited - while the staff may have known a lot about books in general, this didn't translate very well into a better experience for me.

It's not even a better experience than Amazon, where I can typically find out far more about a book than at any independent bookstore...and there are many other internet resources available.

In the pre-internet days, when information was a lot harder to come by, a good independent bookstore may have had access to information that I didn't know or couldn't have found out myself. But those days are long gone.

[abookreader]

In the modern era, I receive far better "literary service" from blogs, user groups, and social networking via the internet than I have ever received from a bookstore.

[taosaur]

Ebooks have more advantages all around, but I do see something being lost with both book and record stores fading away. Obviously I find it worth the cost, having made the transition ahead of the curve.

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by taosaur

Ebooks have more advantages all around, but I do see something being lost with both book and record stores fading away. Obviously I find it worth the cost, having made the transition ahead of the curve.

If ebooks ( and ebook stores) really have more advantages all around, maybe we should stop complaining about "unconscionable" ebook prices?

NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!

I want to support independent bookstores and there are some great ones out there ( Politics & Prose in my neck of the woods is one of them). But the convenience of buying and reading ebooks is really undermining my resolve.

[taosaur]

On the whole, prices have become considerably more sane than they were two years ago, and we have Amazon to thank for that, too, to a considerable extent. At this point, I prefer to support their competitors, but their successful timing and marketing with the Kindle obviously opened up the market and convinced the publishers that ebooks are a reality. Kind of like Starbucks--it's the last place I'd go for coffee, but you gotta give 'em credit