3 ms·
for one thing, i know that a local bookstore will never punish writers by, say, yanking all Hachette titles off their shelves in a vindictive, monopolistic fit
by thefastlane 11y ago
for one thing, i know that a local bookstore will never punish writers by, say, yanking all Hachette titles off their shelves in a vindictive, monopolistic fit.
like others have said: Amazon has been a big reason why other bookstores are going out of business, and we are culturally poorer for it. bookstores are about culture, not speed. and it's also about who drives culture: neighborhoods and curators? or a neoliberal megacorporation that holds authors and publishers in disdain?
- Ollinson 11y agoI'd rather have a corporate bookstore than an independent one. My personal experience with independent bookstores is that they're usually biased about their stock and can be even more vindictive against authors they don't like. It doesn't help that most bookstore owners I have met (maybe half a dozen) are aggressively opinionated about what books are "worthy."
- eropple 11y agoIs that a negative, when there's another one down the street? I like people with opinions, when there's more than one to sample from. That Amazon has effectively destroyed the idea of a bookstore as a curator, without really replacing it, is still troubling to me (and random curators online don't have the same investment--that is to say, a financial one--in providing something worth considering).