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.
