B&N will always have a place. There are still a significant amount of people that prefer brick and mortar. On top of that I find myself, in my late 20s, still heading to B&N to have a coffee and read. The atmosphere is the business they are in now. If they understand that they will be ok.
Is the bookstore dead, or is AMZN just evil?
- Thread starter nitro
- Start date
========Partial Quote from IanMacQuaide:
I've been predicting the end of print media since 1982. Maybe I'm a bit ahead of my time?
I do think print media will die off, and little Mom and Pop book stores could spring up for those very few who just gotta have pages in their hands, or just like the way a bookshelf looks in their home for nostalgia.
There are generations being born now ...
They're too busy...
Next comes holographic displays.
Mr mac;
Thats the thing about predicting[especially the future]
LOLAnother thing about predicting, someimes. with enough predictions [like since 1982] some mabe right .Books -a Million is a penny stock ,has been for some time, like SLV, silver ,it seemd like the sellers sold it @area of $50 or $55. Not a prediction
Barnes & Noble didnt make it much past $50 or $55 also...AMZN does have some good buys, some good reviews;
but for magazines i usually suscribe/US mail...Its cheaper, quicker, no sales tax... Is it worth buying @ $250 or @255?? Not to me its NOT. Not a prediction .
Interesting post, murray t turtle
This is great news for me, as I have lots of print copies that I would love to add to my digital collection:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101004738
http://www.cnbc.com/id/101004738
The Reading Brain in the Digital Age: Why Paper Still Beats Screens
http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...the-digital-age-why-paper-still-beats-screens
http://www.scientificamerican.com/a...the-digital-age-why-paper-still-beats-screens
Amazon unfortunately has turned into an evil company.
It was still a customer friendly outsider 10 years ago when I started using them, but now it 's evil. CS is awful. It tracks your habits and it tracks you on the web , it sends you spam. Bezos got greedy he wants to run everyone into the ground, doesn't have enough billions I guess, poor soul .
I am trying to find alternatives , but there isn't really any good one.
I can't comprehend why Kindle is popular. Reading on this thing looks terrible. But above all, above all, if you lose your Kindle or subscription or whatever key you need, you lose your library !
Amazon could also decide that you must pay up too keep getting access. It's a horrible way to read books, think about it. When you have book shelves you go back to them and you read and re-read your books. You don't do that with Kindle, your books get lost in your list of hundreds of titles. Thanks to Kindle peopel will be even less educated, they will just read a few pages of each book they buy then store it and forget it. And their children won't have book shelves to go to to find books, they will be idiots like today's teens but worse , they will be perfect citizens for the coming tyranny .
It was still a customer friendly outsider 10 years ago when I started using them, but now it 's evil. CS is awful. It tracks your habits and it tracks you on the web , it sends you spam. Bezos got greedy he wants to run everyone into the ground, doesn't have enough billions I guess, poor soul .
I am trying to find alternatives , but there isn't really any good one.
I can't comprehend why Kindle is popular. Reading on this thing looks terrible. But above all, above all, if you lose your Kindle or subscription or whatever key you need, you lose your library !
Amazon could also decide that you must pay up too keep getting access. It's a horrible way to read books, think about it. When you have book shelves you go back to them and you read and re-read your books. You don't do that with Kindle, your books get lost in your list of hundreds of titles. Thanks to Kindle peopel will be even less educated, they will just read a few pages of each book they buy then store it and forget it. And their children won't have book shelves to go to to find books, they will be idiots like today's teens but worse , they will be perfect citizens for the coming tyranny .
Baron
ET Founder
I'm not sure who told you that but that is absolutely not true. Your library is actually stored on the Amazon cloud. You download copies of that library onto the kindle devices you own. If you were to drop your kindle and ruin it today, all you would need to do is get a new kindle, sign in with your account and re-download whatever titles from your purchased library that you want to read.
Ok that was me being uninformed, but I would be too afraid of the rules being changed down the road. For example, your Kindle may become non compatible at some point with a new format, you will be forced to get a new one (ok no big deal), access to the library may require subscription to some new service, some new requirements may turn out to be inconvenient etc.. You don't really own your books. To make an analogy it's like physical gold and paper gold. What if amazon goes out of business ? Ok unlikely but in 20 years who knows could be bought out by some private equity firm, they will decide you need to pay more for access. And you can't copy pages as far as I know.
For authors, I think Kindle is terrible as well. They don't realize it and go along but I am not sure they are better off. First off I am not sure Kindle offers enough protection against piracy, you can use Kindle on many devices such as PC's, from there I would think this may open the door to piracy. AFAIK there are many websites explaining how to get free Kindle books, how I don't know but I read there are ways to copy Kindle books. Prices on Kindle are ridiculous. $9.99 excuse me but even with much higher royalties, $9.99 is not a fair price for the amount of work a book represents. All Bezos wants to do is become the Apple of the e-reader, they want to be a tech company and for that they need to sell Kindles, to sell Kindles they need to drive e-book prices into the ground. The main reason Kindle has been a success is because Kindle books cost a lot less than paper books. The result is that people actually balk at paying anything higher than $10-$15 for the Kindle version, somehow they think that because it's on a screen, a book is worth less. Yet the paper for the book is worth about $5.
For authors, I think Kindle is terrible as well. They don't realize it and go along but I am not sure they are better off. First off I am not sure Kindle offers enough protection against piracy, you can use Kindle on many devices such as PC's, from there I would think this may open the door to piracy. AFAIK there are many websites explaining how to get free Kindle books, how I don't know but I read there are ways to copy Kindle books. Prices on Kindle are ridiculous. $9.99 excuse me but even with much higher royalties, $9.99 is not a fair price for the amount of work a book represents. All Bezos wants to do is become the Apple of the e-reader, they want to be a tech company and for that they need to sell Kindles, to sell Kindles they need to drive e-book prices into the ground. The main reason Kindle has been a success is because Kindle books cost a lot less than paper books. The result is that people actually balk at paying anything higher than $10-$15 for the Kindle version, somehow they think that because it's on a screen, a book is worth less. Yet the paper for the book is worth about $5.
Some of what you say is true but one of the major reasons kindle books are priced low is to provide an incentive against piracy, yes you can get it pirated but it is a pain in the ass and it takes time to find pirated versions, for most people it is just better to pay $9.99 and move on. If they were to price it at $49 then most would pirate it
Its hard to stop this tendency for things to be priced low and for margins to be small because society just doesn't give a damn about compensating people for their work for the most part