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Note that I didn't say Walmart is bad. In fact I said: 'Is it good for consumers? Probably', and I mean that. I called their goods junk, just as I'm willing to
by ssp 17y ago
Note that I didn't say Walmart is bad. In fact I said: 'Is it good for consumers? Probably', and I mean that.
I called their goods junk, just as I'm willing to call The Duke's Boardroom Affair junk, because that's how those products are seen, even by people who buy them. That doesn't imply any disdain for people who buy Chinese-factory-made T-shirts, or people who read romance novels.
(If you consider the number of people who buy Chinese-factory-made T-shirts or read romance novels, you'd have to feel disdain for an extremely large percentage of people).
The point is simply that what Amazon is doing could turn them into the Walmart of bookstores, for better or worse.
- adamc 17y agoRazor blades are junk? Toothpaste is junk? No. They are commodities. Wal-Mart traffics in commodities, selling them at commodity prices, squeezing suppliers but generally benefiting their customers. If MacMillan can't work out a deal with Amazon and sells their books elsewhere, bully for them. If enough publishers did that, maybe Amazon would have to capitulate. But I suspect that Patrick was right, and that most of us would just buy other books, most of the time. The reality is that there is an enormous ocean of good to great books, more than I can ever read, and Amazon's conveniences are likely more significant than which authors get published on Amazon.