We know — a lot of you are anti-Amazon. We understand your reasoning, but at Chez Booksquare, Amazon has been a major lifeline. While we do not meet the traditional definition of shut-ins, the occupants of our household, especially male, have a strong aversion to shopping, crowds, and shopping in crowds. Online shopping has made the entire buying-something-wonderful-for-the-wife experience a pleasure.
Also, it has strengthened our relationship with our UPS driver.
While Amazon runs the risk of becoming the Evil Overlord of Online Shopping, it does so much good around here, we are turning a blind eye to the potential. Plus, you gotta admit that Jeff Bezos did a great thing, making it easy to buy even more books than ever before. We know many of you would have spent increasing sums on food and beverage — thanks to Bezos, your extra dollars can go toward the printed word. And blenders.
Wired interviews Bezos who touches on fun subjects like lots of books (would that we had our own warehouse), print-on-demand (someday it will be the miracle of the century), and humans as social creatures.
Except the husband.
2 responses so far ↓
daniel olivas // Jan 8, 2005 at 5:57 pm
…ah, but there’s room for other online sellers of fine books. and they’re a lot friendlier to writers. for example, powells has been very receptive to me, the author, when i’ve emailed reviews of my books. they have read the reviews AND then posted under my books a line or two from the reviews (a real live powells person finds the best lines from the reviews and strings them together for a pithy and enticing endorsement). on the other hand, whenever i’ve tried to correct or add to my amazon listing, i get no response whatsoever. granted, amazon allows us to review books (which i do quite often) but so does another online seller: barnes & noble.
booksquare // Jan 9, 2005 at 7:51 pm
You won’t get any argument from me — my idea of a good time is Powell’s (this is mostly a secret as I’m considered strange enough as it is!). However, Powells doesn’t stock the same range of books that Amazon does (and I have a rather bizarre and unexplainable aversion to Barnes and Noble). I encourage the use of the wide range of online booksellers (and even more fun…local bookstores!).
By the way, that’s cool that Powell’s posts reviews. I hadn’t noticed that, but maybe that’s because not every author takes advantage of this service? I think that’s really, really great.