I know it's anecdotal, this idea does not seem far-fetched to me at all. I buy about a hundred books a year, and while I used to buy a lot of them from amazon,

I know it's anecdotal, this idea does not seem far-fetched to me at all. I buy about a hundred books a year, and while I used to buy a lot of them from amazon, I know that I discovered at most 2-3 a year through it. Now I never buy books on Amazon any more, because I'd rather give my money to the bookstores that I love (and provide me a valuable service) than to yet another internet monopoly. Bookstores (well, the ones that do their job anyway) tend to select the books they will put on display and write reviews to help you discover good new things to read. On the other hand Amazon seems to be very bad at this, only ever giving irrelevant or useless suggestions (i.e. books on the same topic that the one i just bought, all the other books from the same author - as if I couldn't find them by myself - and that kind of useless "recommendations")