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Comment by thefastlane | Hacker News Reader

> I don't expect a wave of [Amazon bookstores] popping up across the country, mostly because of how other large bookstore chains have shuttered in recent years. At the same time, now I can at least imagine a world in which they might work

> If there's a case for an Amazon bookstore, it's really the case for any other store in the mall: It will always (or at least the foreseeable future) be faster to buy something in person than it will be on the internet.

i shop at independent bookstores whenever possible, and it's not because it's 'faster'.

this essay sidesteps several elephants in the room...

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What are your reasons, then? Of which elephants do you speak?

I'm assuming the OP is talking independent stores vs. Amazon as in "I don't wanna support the monolithic beast known as Amazon; I'd rather support mom&pop stores".... and other various data points around Amazon-is-evil-crazy-sweatshops-and-twist-arms-of-book-authors type stuff.

for one thing, i know that a local bookstore will never punish writers by, say, yanking all Hachette titles off their shelves in a vindictive, monopolistic fit.

like others have said: Amazon has been a big reason why other bookstores are going out of business, and we are culturally poorer for it. bookstores are about culture, not speed. and it's also about who drives culture: neighborhoods and curators? or a neoliberal megacorporation that holds authors and publishers in disdain?

I'd rather have a corporate bookstore than an independent one. My personal experience with independent bookstores is that they're usually biased about their stock and can be even more vindictive against authors they don't like.

It doesn't help that most bookstore owners I have met (maybe half a dozen) are aggressively opinionated about what books are "worthy."

Is that a negative, when there's another one down the street? I like people with opinions, when there's more than one to sample from. That Amazon has effectively destroyed the idea of a bookstore as a curator, without really replacing it, is still troubling to me (and random curators online don't have the same investment--that is to say, a financial one--in providing something worth considering).

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