For Amazon, lavish praise. For bookstores, not so much:
Compared with online retailers, bookstores present a frustrating consumer experience. A physical store—whether it's your favorite indie or the humongous Barnes & Noble at the mall—offers a relatively paltry selection, no customer reviews, no reliable way to find what you're looking for, and a dubious recommendations engine. Amazon suggests books based on others you've read; your local store recommends what the employees like. If you don't choose your movies based on what the guy at the box office recommends, why would you choose your books that way?
In the past, bookstores did have one clear advantage over online retailers—you could read any book before you purchased it. But in the e-book age that advantage has slipped away. Amazon and Barnes & Noble let you sample the first chapter of every digital title they carry, and you can do so without leaving your couch.
[. . .]
So, sure, Amazon doesn't host readings and it doesn't give you a poofy couch to sit on while you peruse the latest best-sellers. But what it does do—allow people to buy books anytime they want—is hardly killing literary culture. In fact, it's probably the only thing saving it.
Everything he says is true. It's amazing for me to realize how much Amazon has enriched my life in just a few years. The article points out that after people buy a Kindle reader, they begin purchasing e-books at twice the rate they'd previously purchased print titles, and they keep buying print titles, too. That's certainly been true in my case. Amazone and Kindle have taken the publishing business to a whole new level in a very short time.
But I love bookstores, too. I love the look of them and the atmosphere in them. They're fun places to hang out in, full of mystery and adventure like the library was for us when we were kids. Leisurely strolling through the asles and browsing is, as the author says, "a meditative experience." I miss Borders, and I'd hate to see Barnes & Noble close, not to mention the half-price store I visit next door every time I eat at Carlos O'Kelly's.
Comments
I had pretty much given up on books in the last ten years. My eye doctor says I'm developing cataracts, and the upshot is that I need more contrast than the gray type on gray paper that most books offer. Kindle offers black type on a white background - and I can size it larger or switch typeface if I need to.
Many publishers offer their books free on Kindle when they are new, in order to get reviews on the Amazon site, and word-of-mouth promotion, then they raise the price. I get a list every day of new free books - and I "buy" over a hundred free books a month. Maybe 10% of them are incredibly good, and of the remaining, 40% are poorly written, 25% would be of interest to someone else, and 25% are books I enjoy.
A nice thing about them is that you, the wife, and your kids can have your Kindles on the same account, and everybody read the same book at the same time, only buying it once.
There are going to be a lot of people getting the new $79 Kindle for Christmas, and I suspect the recipients are mostly going to be very happy with them!
Harl:
I just had cataract surgery this past summer - both eyes. I understand that it is the most common surgery performed now-a-days. Outpatient and painless. Twenty-twenty vision through the artificial lenses with just a small adjustment from my new very light glasses.
As for the Kindle - I bought the $139 version at Leo's urging for the wife, but she reads five books a week and prefers turning real pages. So you can guess who uses the Kindle in my family.