Amazon and the “razor-blade” tactic
Gillette learned this tactic long ago—give away the razors and charge a lot for the blades. Then the printer manufacturers adopted it. They sell cheap printers and very expensive ink. Amazon is doing someting similar with the Kindle e-reader and tablet.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has admitted that the company is selling Kindles at cost with the idea that people will use them to buy Amazon offerings. I confess that it is working with me. I got a Kindle Fire and now I keep buying e-books. It’s so easy to click on an offering and in a couple of seconds download it.
It’s still not the same or as enjoyable as browsing through books in a bookstore. I still like to wander around Barnes & Noble and see what’s on the shelves. I run across things I didn’t know about and this element of serendipity is much reduced online. To be sure, Amazon makes suggestions but it is still much harder to run across a new author or subject.
However, bookstores keep closing down and Barnes & Noble is losing money. I certainly hope the big bookstores will survive but I wouldn’t be surprised if they don’t.
How about you? Do you still go to bookstores?
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Comments
Yea, the times of enjoying your local brick & mortar bookstore are coming to an end. 10 years from now or less printed media may not be an option for buying a book.
I prefer the used ones where you can find really old books. I realize these places may not be open the next time I visit so if you want something you better get it.
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I used to spend hours wandering around bookstores. Like you, that’s how I found new ideas/topics/interesting things. I can remember when bookstores were routinely open until midnight, and some even later on weekends. I spent a lot more money on books than I probably should have at times.
Then in the late ’90′s, most of the independent bookstores went under, and the whole scene went down the tubes in my opinion. The big chains cut back on both their hours and the range of books they carried. It seemed like the really odd-ball (and really interesting) books just weren’t there anymore. And it got hard to tell the difference between Border’s, Barnes & Noble, etc. They all had the same stuff.
I eventually stopped going because I just wasn’t finding the really good stuff anymore.
Now, I either look on the internet or go to a university library. Unfortunately the universities in recent years have started clearing out many of their older books which are often interesting.
The internet just doesn’t work for book browsing the way bookstores used to work, but it’s become the best substitute there is. It does make other types/sources of info much faster and easier to find. Very occasionally I wander through a B&N, but if you’re not in a bigger city the offerings tend to be sparse.
Sad indeed that the good bookstores have gone the way of the dinosaur.
Somehow, electronic data base searches just don’t work the same. How many times did I stumble on something interesting in a bookstore, just because a title caught my eye as I was wandering down an aisle to get to some other part of the store. An electronic search doesn’t give you that kind of exposure.