Amazon Books Should Open Where They're Most Needed
When e-commerce was new and people were still agape to give out their credit carte du jour information online, Amazon lured shoppers with the slogan "Earth'southward biggest bookstore" and the promise of cheap books delivered to their doorsteps.
At the fourth dimension, the book industry was busy battling major booksellers; a 1997 Slate slice almost Amazon'southward early on days was skeptical to say the least ("Earth'southward Biggest Bookstore"? More than like "Earth's Smallest").
Only Amazon clawed its fashion to the top. When 2-day delivery was too irksome, Amazon in 2007 introduced its ain Kindle ereaders and instantaneous downloads. Past 2022, ebook sales surpassed print book sales for the outset time on Amazon. Nosotros said farewell to Borders shortly thereafter, while Barnes & Noble has been closing about fifteen stores a twelvemonth for over a decade.
5 years ago, it seemed that Amazon had succeeded in doing what tech companies set out to practise: disrupt a traditional manufacture. What it didn't expect was for readers to resist. Brick-and-mortar bookstores that remain have seen their sales go upwardly at a pretty steady pace since 2022, while ebooks sales dropped nearly 19 pct in the Usa last year.
Despite Amazon'due south success in tearing down retail, it's found that it can't change how people relate to books. People want to hold existent books and flip through pages while surrounded by other readers. For every bit lonely equally the human action of reading can be, readers are a community.
Enter Amazon Books, which opened today in Manhattan's sleeky Time Warner Heart. But every bit shiny a temple to capitalism equally information technology is, Amazon should await due north and east. There is no shortage of bookstores in Manhattan, but Queens—New York's largest and virtually ethnically diverse borough—has but ane bookstore, the excellent simply very small-scale Astoria Bookshop. And the Bronx lost its last bookstore, a Barnes & Noble, a few months agone.
Community organizers are stepping in; The Queens Bookshop Initiative just reached its goal of securing space and funding for a store, and The Lit Bar is trying to do the same thing in the Bronx. Every bit a strong believer in independent bookstores, I desire these and other initiatives to succeed. Yet as a person whose life was formed by a honey of reading, I desire there to be equally many bookstores as possible—and that means corporate bookstore alongside community ones.
If Amazon wants to practise what is best for itself, it will also do what'due south best for readers and open bookstores in the poor and working-class areas that accept been let without them.
Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/opinion/15760/amazon-books-should-open-where-theyre-most-needed
Posted by: greenpoempon.blogspot.com
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