History shows again and again how nature points up the folly of men

[rolanni]

Thanks to everyone who weighed in on the Ipad question! While in theory it would be very cool to be able to walk around with my entire library, all of my contacts, and every song I’ve ever heard in my life, one does need to wonder what will happen if the infrastructure that allows one to access those things either vanishes or becomes too expensive to buy into.

I think I’ll hold the square I’m on at the moment, since I don’t find it necessary to only listen to “my” music, and I don’t mind schlepping CDs for long drives.

Speaking of infrastructures vanishing and stuff like that — we all know people who use brick-n-mortar bookstores as their personal catalog. Which is to say, they go into the bookstore, handle the stock, read half a book or half a series or whatever it is that they feel is “enough” to convince them to buy. They then make a note of that books/series/whatever, go home or pull out their cell, and proceed to buy the book from Amazon.

As if, yanno, the bookstore they’re not buying stuff from is there as a service, and doesn’t actually need sales in order to stay in business.

So, anyway, Amazon has heard of this, and, Mr. Bezos not being a man who has ever been shy of placing his own profit above EVERYTHING else, has decided to reward this behavior by paying people five entire bucks to go into a bookstore, scan a book, and buy it on Amazon.

Here’s the article

Here’s a petition, in case this makes you just a little cranky.

And now, having bought Necessary Stuff at drugstore.com; and crashed the Petco website — I have work to do!

Originally published at Sharon Lee, Writer. You can comment here or there.

Comments

Amazon bookstore actions

[(Anonymous)]

My husband is a small bookstore owner who is dependant on the internet and local traffic to remain in business. He is a seller on Amazon, as they are the big gorilla of internet booksellers. The fact that they are willing to encourage customers to bypass my husbands bookstore, at the expense of the small sellers, is very disappointing -- to the tune of going out of business and eliminating a few more American jobs, as well as decreasing driving times and energy expenditure. Such is life (sometimes, it sucks)
Jean Eelma