Comments

1
Books are a waste of trees and space. Kindles are the future. Get used to it.
2
@1 Be that as it may, that's like trying to get a video rental store to sell Netflix subscriptions.

Yes, they might be headed for the grave, but don't expect them to drive the nails into their own coffins.
3
Barnes and Noble is at least a bookseller. The people who work there share the same passion for books that employees at independent bookstores have.

I believe the durability of books will ensure that they don't disappear any time soon. My house is littered with cassette tapes, VHS tapes, floppy disks, zip disks, vinyl records, and other media that I don't own a device to play. The nice thing about books is they are a self contained medium. They don't require ongoing support from a company for their existence. A hundred years from now Kindle will be long forgotten, but many of the books printed today will still be readable.
4
I just finished reading a book that was published in the 1930s. It wasn't some pampered collector piece; it was just a book I checked out of the library that happened to be 80 years old. It's been read dozens—probably hundreds—of times.

Do you think you'll be able to read a 2013 Kindle book in 80 years?
5
Doorknob Danny has no reticence selling his book on Amazon.
6
I'm still upset about what Gutenberg did to all those poor monks.
But at least he didn't set up shop in their monasteries, I guess.
7
I'm eager to see your articles that rip on Apple for putting record store owners out of work. I love Elliot Bay, and I love Powell's, but in the future almost all information will be exchanged over the internet.

That being said, it's insensitive at best for Amazon to call bookstores trying to get them to sell Kindles. Especially because it's not like Amazon is letting them in on a preferred selling plan- you can buy the damn things everywhere nowadays.
8
I'd love to buy kindle content thru indie booksellers. At least they get a piece of the action that way.
9
I dream that someday books come with kindle download codes (or vice versa); it's starting to happen for dvd and vinyl.
10
@7

Apple didn't put record stores out of business. Record Stores was hit by the file sharing tsunami, that technology unleashed. If Apple wasn't on the top of the wave, there would had been others, like Sony, Microsoft, Nokia, even Amazon. The Recording Industry played a huge role in the demise of record stores. Much like CDs are now relics.
11
@10: understood. I'm not blaming Apple. The exact reverse. I'm saying Apple is OK, and so is Amazon, because technology was rendering most record stores (as most book stores) obsolete.

In the future, book stores will just have rare and esoteric stuff. Just like record stores.
12
"...but they famously don't respond to inquiries from journalists."

Oh, they respond to journalists all the time. Actual journalists. Not you.
13
I love books, I love bookstores, and I love reading on my Kindle. I would be so grateful if a few independent bookstores would brave the ire of their peers to at least TRY some kind of relationship with Amazon that would benefit readers. If there was a way I could buy eBooks and know a percentage went to the Tattered Cover or Harvard Bookstore, I'd be glad to walk to the stores and hit the BUY button. You may say that I'm a dreamer...
14
13, you can do that...you just cant do it on the Kindle or thru Amazon. But any other e-reading device has the capability to buy ebooks from independent bookstore websites, and they get a miniscule percent of the profit from the sale.
15
You can buy ebook downloads from most of your favorite bookstores right now via KOBO & the bookstores' websites and read them on most devices, including iPads, Nooks & Kindle Fire. Same prices usually also.
16
It once was that one could only rent a textbook through Amazon if they had a Kindle and not every book is available for Kindle. However, let the rejoicing start, as the Amazon textbook rental program currently includes hard copies. Get an https://personalmoneynetwork.com/install… loan to pay for your textbooks.

Please wait...

and remember to be decent to everyone
all of the time.

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