Booksellers Resisting Amazon’s Disruption says a report by David Streitfeld in The New York Times.
“Amazon inspires anxiety just about everywhere, but its publishing arm
is getting pushback from all sorts of booksellers, who are scorning the
imprint’s most prominent title, Timothy Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Chef."It is indeed rich that Amazon requires brick-and-mortar bookshops to display its titles so customers can browse through the books before buying it online from them. Why would bookshops want to do that? Has book selling come a full circle then? Barnes & Noble will not carry Amazon’s books. Other large physical and digital stores, too. “Many independents ... will do nothing to help ... a company they feel is hellbent on their destruction.” Touché.
On another front, Walmart and Target have stopped selling the Kindle, worried that it’s a Trojan horse. So, why are these two retail giants nervous?
Trojan horse
In the book world there is one superpower. (The Penguin-Random House merger potentially creates another, but that’s left to be seen.) It’s amazing that after all these years Amazon is still said in the same breath as books, although Amazon has been selling more than books for so many years now. It started as a bookshop in 1995 and didn’t make money for 5 years, until the investors got nervous, and it diversified. It’s current catalogue includes DVDs, CDs, MP3 downloads, software, video games, electronics, apparel, furniture, food, toys, and jewellery. Amazon is a departmental store, and has been one for a decade.
There is a rumour that Amazon wants to get into the wine business. After that what? Cheese and crackers? Well, anything really. In the sixties, before the days of the supermarket, mother would draw up her monthly grocery list, telephone the store, and have the orders delivered or readied for pick-up. Is it inconceivable that Amazon has not seen that opportunity? A market of 300 million, all to themselves? You don’t think Amazon could be that unscrupulous?
The future is digital; it’s time brick-and-mortar stores get used to that. So what are they to do? If the likes of Walmart and Target are smart, they’d produce their own stripped down version of the Kindle, dedicated for shopping at their stores, and give them away to their customers. Alternatively, they could develop shopping apps for Android and iOS.
