Is the bookstore dead, or is AMZN just evil?

[nitro]

Barnes & Noble being investigated by SEC; stock falls

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101253393

Sometimes I wonder if bookstores are their own worst enemy

 

[nitro]

Barnes & Noble shares soar on buyout offer

"G Asset Management proposes to acquire controlling stake in Barnes & Noble"

http://www.cnbc.com/id/101408443

I hope this isn't a bad omen. It would be criminal not to have a bookstore of size in this country.

 

[nitro]

Markets are rigged (I know, this should be no surprise)

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/bks

You think people had been tipped to the deal on Feb 03?

 

[piezoe]

If I were Jeff Bezos (full disclosure: I'm not!) I'd consider acquiring B&N on the cheap after driving it to virtual bankruptcy. Should be possible in an age when the "Sherman Act" is ignored, for all that is except those who failed to contribute their fair share to both Parties. It is very useful to Amazon to have locations around the country where customers can actually look at a book before they go home and order it from Amazon.

 

[Swan Noir]

The press -- even the Washington Post -- would jump all over Amazon if they even hinted at picking up the road kill they had just run over.

If I were Jeff Bezos (full disclosure: I'm not!) I'd consider acquiring B&N on the cheap after driving it to virtual bankruptcy. Should be possible in an age when the "Sherman Act" is ignored, for all that is except those who failed to contribute their fair share to both Parties. It is very useful to Amazon to have locations around the country where customers can actually look at a book before they go home and order it from Amazon.

 

[piezoe]

The press -- even the Washington Post -- would jump all over Amazon if they even hinted at picking up the road kill they had just run over.

Quite true, we'd never hear the end of it! It would be very much in the 19th and early 20th century capitalist tradition however.

 

[Pekelo]

You have just realized you wasted your life when you are a billionaire and still eating cooked cockroaches:

Reuters/REUTERS - Amazon Chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos samples cooked cockroach at the 110th Explorers Club Annual Dinner at the Waldorf Astoria in New York March 15, 2014. The club, which promotes the scientific exploration of land, sea, air and space featured catering by chef and exotic creator Gene Rurka. Chef Rurka prepared a variety of dishes featuring an array of insects, wildlife, animal body parts and invasive species.

 

[trendlover]

Technology Of Books Has Changed, But Bookstores Are Hanging In There

From
If the book is dead, nobody bothered to tell the folks at Capitol Hill Books in Washington, D.C. Books of every size, shape and genre occupy each square inch of the converted row house — including the bathroom — all arranged in an order discernible only to the mind of Jim Toole, the store's endearingly grouchy owner.

Visitors are greeted by a makeshift sign listing words that are banned in the store, including "awesome," "perfect" and, most of all, "Amazon." The online giant has crushed many an independent bookstore — but not Toole's."Hanging in here with my fingernails," he says with a harrumph.

Those are mighty strong fingernails, it seems. While stores like Toole's continue to struggle, independent bookstores overall are enjoying a mini-revival, with their numbers swelling 25 percent since 2009, according to the American Booksellers Association. Sales are up, too.

Remarkably, it's a revival fueled, at least in part, by digital natives like 23-year-old Ross Destiche, who's hauling an armful of books to the register. "Nothing matches the feel and the smell of a book," he says. "There's something special about holding it in your hand and knowing that that's the same story every time, and you can rely on that story to be with you."

The book also has fans from other unexpected quarters. David Gelernter, a professor of computer science at Yale, pioneered advances like "parallel computation," yet he admires the brilliant design of the codex. "It's an inspiration of the very first order. ... It's made to fit human hands and human eyes and human laps in the way that computers are not," he says, wondering aloud why some are in such a rush to discard a technology that has endured for centuries. "It's not as if books have lost an argument. The problem is there hasn't been an argument. Technology always gets a free pass. ... [People] take it for granted that if the technology is new it must be better."

More: http://www.wnyc.org/story/the-technology-of-books-has-changed-but-bookstores-are-hanging-in/


Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

 

[dealmaker]

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https://twitter.com/x/status/1047849591993982976

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[piezoe]

"Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal"

http://www.cnbc.com/id/44926222

I understand how this will benefit authors in the short term, since they are cutting out middle men, in theory. But are we all really going to buy our books from AMZN only? Barnes and Noble is the only bookstore chain left, and imo there should at least be one place where we can go and be exposed to a large number of books, sit and have a cup of coffee, read a newspaper, peruse and buy books.

We are creating the next AT&T.

What will remain are great used book stores where you can sit in an easy chair and read as long as you like. There are lots of them around the country.