The Monty Hall problem.

Anyway, I agree with Kodak - film is here to stay.

max:

One of the nice things about being old is the certain knowledge that sooner or later all you youngsters will be "old" and listening to 20-year-olds telling you how smart they are - and how clueless you are. You'll just smile and let out a small laugh. (I remember when I was 17 thinking that anybody in their 40's was old. Now I'm in my 60's!)

I look at the bright side. While you "youngs" are slogging away every day in the rat race, I'll be playing bridge with rich widows.

This Gutenberg guy could be trouble for calligraphers

I remember being 17 and thinking everyone in their 40's were old. Nothing since has suggested I was wrong

Have you tried electric book reading thingies?

Amz and B&N often have used books for the same prices.

I'll go to Amz for the superior user data about a volume, then go buy at B&N, but it's a hassle. Tried to install Nook on phone, but it wouldn't so anything E is Kindle.

Would not be good if Amz were the only retailer left. My god, does this condemn me to siding with Walmart?

I go to B&N a few times a month with my kids. They have a really good kids area and different kids events. I like that I can get my kids excited about books. The local library is not as exciting.

Sucks that there are as many toys as books, and also sucks that most books are based on tv shows or movies, but they gotta compete. I'll pay a few more bucks to get a book for them there in most cases to support them and also to reduce the carbon footprint of having the same thing shipped to me in a bunch of packaging, but still buy books on Amazon too.

Would never go there if it wasn't for the kids, buying books online is better in nearly every conceivable way otherwise.

Yeah when did this happen?

The environmental friendly move would be ebooks.

Not sure if this is actually true. Isn't a bunch of people driving to physical locations for single purposes worse than a delivery truck on the most efficient route or whatever?

Alan,

Was this B&N in Latin America? I'm surprised they were not willing to negotiate with you.

Also, try Borders if you are looking for another brick and mortar option.

Yeah that spectrum goes further than that. The library or used books are arguably better still. I'm not getting a kindle for my 3 or 5 yo though.

Anyway, on the environmental titanic the amount of cardboard, plastic bubble wrap and other bs packing I am filling my bin with every week from Amazon orders is a deck chair I want to line up a bit so I can feel like a good person.

There are so many externalities and different ways to calculate environmental costs that it's impossible to make meaningful comparisons between physical and digital media.

I don't claim to know the answer to the a or b question, but by looking at the tracking there is no way in hell anything is shipped in the most efficient way possible for the environment, even if it is the cheapest.

In my case, the book store is without a doubt closer than even the last distribution point before delivery, and we are nearly always on a series of errands. We don't put each book in a box and lol bubble wrap or a long ass piece of crumpled brown paper, no shipping labels, tape etc.

I'm not under the illusion that I'm making a dent in ****, I just get sick of throwing away garbage and recycling brand new cardboard boxes and it makes me feel like less of a ****ing capitalist pig for a split second.

stopp bragging

On the other hand, Amazon don't distribute books, many of which will never sell, to loads of stores. Stores that then use more heating/lighting/etc per book than vast warehouses. The packaging from Amazon seems overwhelming in this debate but it is only for books that have sold.

It's hard to know the true answer.

Good points.

I recently bought some books on Amazon (as I often do--at a pace of approximately 4x the speed at which I've been reading them). Anyway, one of the books was a 4/5 condition used book, which I did not notice during my impulse buy. No big deal, I'm fine with used books.

However, this did occasion the thought, "Does Amazon even care much about books anymore?" They now sell pretty much everything under the sun, have approximately 65 million Prime members at $100/yr, are the main e-book platform (with prices usually similar to hard copy books), have a film/tv production company, grocery delivery, etc.

These days Amazon seems more than happy to point you to a third-party used bookseller than to sell you a new book, likely because the margins are better and they don't need to carry the inventory. Anyway, I've long considered Borders and Barnes & Nobel dead, but I would be surprised if book sales are more than 10% of Amazon's business these days. It's a juggernaut in many areas, and if it cares about books it's partly due to nostalgia (though they no doubt make bank being America's Monopoly Bookseller(TM).

Borders has been dead for real for quite a few years now. And I'd be shocked if book sales even make up 2% of Amazon's revenue.

What a weird world that people are pining for the glory days of freakin' chain stores like Borders and B&N. They used to be the enemy.

I was a frequent patron of the OG Border's Books in Ann Arbor back in the day I don't miss it that much, tbh. These days, I my local indie used bookstore. I have no clue how used bookstores stay in business, but I'm glad they do.

Amazon is the number two search engine behind google and number one for product searches. They make a lot of money by charging for paid search, ads and special pages. They take a cut of everything that marketplace sellers sell, collect the data, and then take over the most lucrative markets.

Anything in that is prime is either sold directly from them or warehoused and fulfilled by them at a higher cost to the marketplace sellers. The margins are razor thin for marketplace sellers and they can't compete with Amazon directly so they have no choice but to get in bed with them and give them all the secrets of their business while paying them for the privilege.

Even shipping through FedEx/ups yourself as a retailer outside of Amazon is at a lower tier of service because Amazon is such an important customer they suck up the VIP bandwidth.

When Amazon and Walmart, who is finally starting to catch up online enough to be a threat, battle it out in anyone's core space there is literally no way to compete as they will both go well into negative margins to win a space.

I figure all the used book stores are laundering money for one thing or another.

Try selling your old books to a used book store. You'll learn how they make money real fast.

Tip for the late adopters, Amazon's "Amazon Basics" brand sells about 1500 "pretty good" items at low prices. https://www.amazon.com/AmazonBasics/pages/2528919011

So, ya, the competition in books is already dead. Now they're going after everything else. By the way, a ton of third-party sellers make their living selling products, both original and as resellers, on Amazon, and there are often fights about IP rights (trademark, copyright, design and utility patent) with Amazon in the middle. Amazon's default response is to take the item down and say, "Ya, we'll put it back up if you send and admission or court judgment of noninfringment." If I were so inclined, I could probably build a 5 lawyer firm devoted to Amazon takedown requests and responses. I currently have one matter involving an Amazon takedown and have passed on others.

Haha this is so true. When my aunt died, we brought all her books to the bookstore (like 100 of them) and the guy was like I'll give you $10. He knew we didn't want to carry them back to the car. I was impressed with how shameless he was about it.